This Old Heart of Mine

by Thomas Berger

  The Jacks gasped.

  “I mean,” said Fedder, “we didn’t think of that when we started making noise about the sewer. After all, we are only amateur politicos up against this local Tammany. What can you expect? I wouldn’t sneer if I were you, Carl. Most of the rest of us come from somewhere else. Your advice could be invaluable. In addition, you work for Hum-bold.” Fedder fell on the ice cream that the sun was rapidly causing to dwindle, and made short work of it. Reinhart wanted to drive home and get the rest of the data from the horse’s mouth, i.e., Claude himself, but felt he owed it to Fedder to tarry here with him.

  Wiping his face, Fedder said without warning: “Know who likes you? Bee.” Then with a glint in his eye, he asked: “Anything new on the domestic front?”

  Reinhart called his bluff by explaining to the Jacks: “My wife left me, is what he means.” He had succeeded in his aim: they were all rendered uncomfortable, including Fedder. So much of life consists of embarrassments that sometimes the best you can do is beat the other fellow to them.

  Without further ado, he bade them goodbye and repaired to the parking lot; he was actually amused at the thought that Fedder might calumniate him in absentia. It gave him status.

  As Reinhart had told Fedder, he and Claude Humbold had not crossed paths for a length of time that could be called unconscionable, if you were looking for an excuse to use that word. It occurred to Reinhart because he had on his conscience a statement by Genevieve that Claude’s paying him a salary for doing nothing seemed pretty fishy to her. Having made allowances for her overwrought state, Reinhart still was left with a conviction that it also smelled funny to him. The boss had been eluding him for weeks, though oddly enough paying his salary on schedule, through the mail. The more you thought about it, the more pathological it seemed for Claude to put out money without being beaten into it.

  Reinhart had a secret: for some time he had not taken out a single client. It really was impossible to read the complete Iliad, etc., not to mention the assignments in Psych and French, and work too. Every afternoon he drove to one of the listings at the edge of town, a vacant cottage in a yard full of weeds, concealed the Gigantic behind a decaying toolshed, crept into the house, and lying upon an old blanket that smelled of dog, read till five. Not only did he misrepresent these workdays to Genevieve; he lied about them to himself: the ebullience of ego he had enjoyed until Gen left, owed to his belief that in himself, alone in the Middle West, were both spirit and matter united in Renaissance proportions—the cultivated realtor, the practical intellectual, Carlo de’ Medici.

  To take money from Claude under such conditions was thievery. Reinhart supposed he could literally be sent to prison for so doing, but that aspect did not interest him at present, no more than did the adjustments that should be made in his self-picture. What he found intriguing was that Claude, who would not without coercion pay you for an actual service honestly performed, here seemed to be naively conspiring in a fraud against himself…. Which was unlikely. He was cooking up something.

  Gen had suspected, with her woman’s nose for smelling out shenanigans. Women are very wise. This makes up for the fact that they are seldom well educated. Gen certainly wasn’t; she didn’t know Dante from Adam. There was something grisly about a woman who did.

  He drove straight to the office, intending first to do some reconnoitering in and around the boss’s desk, though one of the telling features of the situation was that Claude seemed to have stopped going there. The most difficult phase of the campaign might be in finding him at all. Reinhart planned to start with something modest, like examining his files. But when he rounded the corner by Maybelle’s Beauty Salon, he saw the big white Cad parked in the middle of the next block. The Gigantic saw it too and, as always, lost face and began to miss in the valves. “You cowardly son of a bitch,” Reinhart said to the dashboard, though he knew a mechanism’s agony is no small matter. To be decent, he ran on a way and parked it near a shabby Nash.

  The glass door of the office, the one that had in a sense brought Reinhart and Genevieve together, was locked. Yet he knew from the Cad that Claude lurked within the inner sanctum; and from certain drifts of blue smoke, that at least one other individual, no enemy of the Kings, was with him.

  He stole around the back of the building and, taking care not to trouble the gravel, sidled under the open window.

  Claude was speaking: “… no, boy, no! Absolutely not, Bobby, never! Bob pal, would you mind pointing that stogie towards the neighbors? I never indulge, old son, and your smoke makes the peepers burn. No offense, Bob. Robert, say you don’t hate me for it! Now just let me flush out the old windpipe with a shot of 100-proof H20, gents, and I’m your man.”

  Hardly valuable eavesdropping as yet, but then you could not expect that it would be all pertinent stuff, which only happens in films. Wearing of bending, Reinhart sat on his heels and waited for Claude to return from the water cooler.

  He was still there when the torrent descended upon him. Momentarily, all he could see was water; then he discerned, back of the up ended bottle, the grim, dedicated visage of Claude Humbold. Imagine, all by himself Claude had lifted the big jug from the cooler, carried it to the window, and tipped it out. But Reinhart could spare no more time for awe. He was being soaked by the fall, which was spasmodic, as air and water struggled for the bottle’s narrow mouth with gloop-gloop noises. He scrambled away.

  “No you don’t!” shouted Humbold. “Halt, fugitive! Call out the dogs! Stop or I’ll hurl this hand grenade and blow you to flinders.”

  Squeezing the water from his shirt—luckily he wore no more than that and wash trousers—Reinhart sheepishly smiled and said: “Sorry, Claude, I was looking for a lucky piece I dropped in the gravel.”

  “Silence, spy!” ordered Humbold, letting the rest of the jug’s contents gurgle out to no purpose. “You are covered by an unseen automatic. Just give your age, name, and employer, or you’re a dead chicken.”

  “Claude! Don’t you recognize me?”

  The boss peered over the bottle, making his eyes mean. “Walk two paces forward, Prisoner…. Why are you disguised as Bud? You’d never fool a soul, you poor devil…. Bud, that ain’t you? Why in the world are you standing there all wet?”

  “I had no intention of spying, Claude,” said Reinhart. “There is a hole in my pocket and as I was passing the window, all my change fell out.”

  The bottle at last empty, Claude pulled it inside. He reappeared grinning wide.

  “Do you a world of good. Never turn off the old radar, bud. Never show your throat to a wolf, lest he rip it asunder. I believe you’ll find that in the Good Book; but if you don’t, don’t call me heathen. Bud, whyn’t you come in, or was you waiting for it to rain?” Gargling a laugh, he fell back indoors.

  Owing to one thing or another, Reinhart had not stopped at Maw’s for a bath in some time. Consequently, this soaking had done him no harm. Then too, it was a hot day, particularly back there on the gravel. Indeed, by the time he had got around front, he was almost dry.

  In Claude’s office sat two other men whom Reinhart recognized instantly though he had not seen them in the flesh since before the war, and the photoengravings of their images used by the local newspaper, made in the Twenties, had been run through the presses so often that they nowadays tended to overink and print Negroes.

  “Bud,” said Claude. “I want to give you a thrill. I want to innerduce you to two of the great statesmen of our era, two of the gents who enrich this country, one nation under God invisible.”

  “Claude,” said Reinhart. “I wanted to explain what I was doing under that window. I had lost my pen, see—”

  “Bud,” said Claude, “silencio, if you please! And kindly meet the Messers Gibbon, the Honorable Bob J., our esteemed mayor, and Mr. C. Roy, police chief.”

  Reinhart said how-do and shook their hands. Bob J. resembled his toad in most features, even to a complexion mottled with liver spots, and little forearms that he held in
close to a squat trunk. C. Roy, in a blue uniform, was as thick through as his brother but tall as Reinhart and with a larger head, on which his hair grew iron-gray and rather in the shape of a Trojan helmet. He gave Reinhart a hard shake indeed, with a judo twist that sent pains far as the elbow. The mayor shook limp, cold, and oily; it felt like sorting anchovies.

  The Gibbon boys had held office continuously since 1928, except for a two-year term won during the middle Thirties by a Reform ticket which promised to remove the slot machines from the confectionery across from the grammar school. Before the war, Reinhart had been wont to jeer at the Gibbons. But now that he was some years older and wiser, and in his new character—young businessman, veteran, husband—his vision was less murky. Actually, there was something reassuring about them. If you had to have politicians, may as well settle for the machine kind; they are steady. Moreover, they will never persecute a man for his own good.

  “Well sir, bud,” said Claude. “I see you are almost dry. Therefore go get a chair from the outer office and park your carcass on it while I check you out on that opportunity I promised I would open up for you if you did good by me, and you have.”

  Reinhart fetched a seat and put it down near the window, where he noticed for the first time a rear-vision mirror of the motorcar type, angled to reflect what would otherwise have been the blind spot along the outside wall: thus had Claude discovered him. Nor did the boss fail to characterize the event.

  “Bud, I never blame a man for trying to make it no matter how. I don’t give a hoot if you tried to sell me out so long as you ain’t got no stronger idea than to sneak outside the winda.” Claude smirked at Bob J., who sat chin on chest, ruminating on a wad of tongue.

  Reinhart decided not to protest further, realizing that it was to everybody’s benefit that he be judged as sinister as possible. He was learning all the time. One day Gen would be proud of him.

  “Now I don’t care what the other side gave you for the goods on me,” Claude went on. He wore a green bowtie today, and the points of his sports-shirt collar fell almost to his waist, which admittedly was drawn high. “When you hear my proposition you’ll tell them to go buy a cesspool and jump in.” This elicited a beastly guffaw from C. Roy, who also smacked his corded fists together.

  “Well sir, bud,” said Claude. “You are in a pretty position up at Vetsville where I got you a nice hut to live in with your lovely Mrs., the former G. Raven who used to be secketary to Your Uncle Dudley—name one after me, bud, and he’ll get a silver cup. Well sir, I guess the kind of monkey you are—in all fairness I believe your best friend would say you was a bit dopey, bud—I guess it ain’t likely you heard of a sanitary improvement that we’re gonna run through.”

  Reinhart was pleased to say: “Yes, I have, Claude. I—”

  Claude metaphorically impaled him on a finger. “Never mock sewers, bud. If you read your history you’ll know that before they had them, the gutters was knee-high with filth—doo-doo floating in plain sight and suchlike.”

  C. Roy belched a laugh. On the epaulets of his uniform were six gold stars, one better than MacArthur; and his cap, which lay on Humbold’s desk, was white on top and blue towards the bottom, with a big oval badge, reading CHIEF, in between.

  “I’m not mocking, Claude. I—”

  “Fine, fine, fine, bud! Show what you learned from me.” The boss told the Gibbons: “You won’t find one cleaner-cut. This boy takes a shower as often as you’n I wash our hands, and his brainpower speaks for itself.”

  “Son,” at last said the mayor, his rheumy eyes rising from their toadlike bags, “ambulate into my vicinity in order that I can discern you.” He revved the corroded motor of his throat, and spat in excruciating slow motion into Humbold’s blond wastebasket. Claude, a fastidious man, averted his eyes.

  Like a sissy schoolboy, Reinhart rose and went to stand where he was told. He had an impulse to announce himself in falsetto: “Carlo Reinhart, age 10.” However, he knew that satire would be out of order.

  “Yasss,” said the mayor, a bead of spit winking at the brim of his lower lip. “Son, did you ever entertain this concept? Cooperation with a venture which would not only benefit your fellow men bearing their grievous yoke of life down the pathway to eternity which we all must in our own good time traverse, but result in the accrual of lucre for yourself as a person as well.”

  “No sir,” said Reinhart. “If I have followed you correctly.”

  C. Roy rubbed his own nose with a hairy fist and said: “You say no to His Honor once more and I’ll put a shoe through your belly.”

  “Easy, Chief,” cried Claude. “This is Georgie Reinhart’s boy. You now Georgie never taught him no sarcasm. He meant No, he never entertained the concept, etcetera, not No to the cooperation with a venture.”

  “I say they gotta learn respect,” growled the chief. “All of them: ids, punks, and wiseguys.”

  “Chiefy, who’s fighting ya?” asked Claude. He nodded at Bob J. Bud would like you to kindly proceed, Your Honor.”

  “Bub—is that your appellation?” asked the mayor, his eyes appearing once again. “Bub, arriving at the conclusion that your probity, integrity, and personal honor are above reproach, like the partner in holy matrimony of the late great Julius Caesar, the committee here assembled, directors of Cosmopolitan Sewers, Limited, hereinafter deferred to as the Firm, quorum present, do hereby elect you as president of said firm and immediately dissolve themselves as a body. Those in favor say Aye; opposed, No; and so order.”

  “Ink in the old John Hancock, bud,” said Claude, handing Reinhart a pen. He pointed to the spread of documents on his desk.

  Had Reinhart not recognized the Gibbon boys—who had been n office since 1928!—he would have taken it for an impractical joke.

  “Gentlemen,” he protested. “I am of course honored by your expression of … uh … but you see, I don’t know the first thing about sewers. Therefore, in all respect, I must—”

  “Listen here, you little snot,” shouted the police chief, threatening to rise. “When your superiors tell you to do a thing, you do it, or by Jesus H. Christ, I’ll rip your tongue right out of your mouth and throw it to the pigs.”

  “Boys,” said Claude, his round face shining like a new ball, “boys, boys, boys. Let’s take a raincheck on the old clowning, fellas, huh, till we do this nice piece of bidniss.” He pressed the pen on Reinhart.

  It seemed terrible to the ex-corporal that C. Roy’s foul mouth should be protected by a badge, and that anybody would talk that way to a veteran.

  “I wanted to ask, bud,” stated Claude, “if I could keep the pen that signed this historic agreement, like them flunkeys around the White House when the Prez signs a law.” He was trying too hard.

  “I’m sorry,” said Reinhart. “I’ll have to think it over.”

  “You know what I’m thinking over,” said C. Roy, “is cutting out your liver.”

  “Gents, gents!” cried Claude. “Let’s have a moratorium on the jokes for maybe five sees. Bud, you sure make a big thing of signing on the dotted. I never knowed you to be so bullix.”

  Reinhart went back to his chair, sat, and endeavored to comport himself as a company president would, though he had not changed his attitude. But there was no point in insulting them in their choice by appearing as less than what they had taken him for.

  “It’s only fair,” he said, “to express my doubts. Frankly, gentlemen, I think you are pulling my leg. I happened to come to the office today just by accident. You couldn’t have expected me. Thus how could you have the papers ready for me to sign? And furthermore, what’s a mayor and police chief doing with a construction company that is to build a public project in the very town where they hold office?”

  “Are you, sir, barrrroooommm”—Bob J. cleared his throat—“are you, good sir, making charges of malfeasance?” A cigar ash fell onto the plateau of his vast belly. He used the end of his tie to whisk it off. “Abuze of public trust? Betrayal of civic confidence
?” He sought to light his cigar-end, but it was too soggy.

  “Certainly not, Your Honor,” answered Reinhart, discreetly lowering his eyelids. “I’m just saying that as evidence you are kidding me.”

  Claude plunged in. “Bud, if you washed your ears today, you just heard Hizzoner dissolve himself, his honorable brother, and yours sincerely from the organization committee. Get that important term, bud! Organization. Where would we be without it? If our public men don’t channel our efforts in the right directions, buddy boy, we’d be no better than them poor benighted coons in darkest Africa, with only a little rag around their tail. Recall Trader Horn, bud, or uz that before your time? Yeaou, roaaaaaarrr, screeeeeech”—he simulated the cries of certain wild animals—“life in the raw, bud: it ain’t no laugh.

  The Holy Word is that the lion will lay down with the lamb, but who knows the schedule, bud, that’s the question. Nobody but the Big Boy Upstairs. Remember that and you’ll never get too big for your britches.”

  “Claude,” said Reinhart. “In all respect, what’s that got to do with the subject at hand?”

  “You little snot,” snarled C. Roy. “Let him have that paperweight right in the mouth, Claude.”

  “Bud, to put it in a walnutshell, if the smart boys like you and me don’t take a hand now and again to keep the boobs on the rails, I don’t know what this country will come to. God bless America, bud. I’ll defend it with every drop of my blood and I know I speak for you when I state that no Hitler nor any other dirty Wop is going to march in here and tell us what to do!” He was shouting now, with awful fangs. “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute! Fifty-four forty or fight, bud! Wait till you see the whites of their eyes! My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country! Send us more Japs! Bud, you must have ice water in your veins if you ain’t thrilled by the music of John Philip Sousa!”

  “Claude,” said Reinhart, “that patriotic stuff is swell, but seriously, what does it have to do with being president of a sewer company?”