Beggarman, Thief

by Irwin Shaw

  Wesley held back. “It’s your box, Calvin,” he said. “It must have cost an awful lot of dough. What do you want to give it to me for, you didn’t even know I was alive until yesterday afternoon?”

  “Take it,” Renway said harshly. “I want the son of the man who did what he did for me to have something I cherish.” Gently, he placed the box in Wesley’s hand.

  “It’s a beautiful box,” Wesley said. “Thanks.”

  “Save your thanks for a time they’re needed,” Renway said. “Now I’m going to put on my coat and I’m going to take you up to One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street and I’m going to feed you the best lunch money can buy in Harlem in the city of New York.”

  The lunch was enormous, fried chicken and sweet potatoes, and they drank a lot of beer with it and Renway put sorrow aside for a time and told Wesley stories about Glasgow and Rio de Janeiro and Piraeus and the Trieste and said his brother kept after him to quit the sea but whenever he thought of living on land and never seeing a new town rising up from the sea as they made port, he knew that he could never bring himself to stop wandering on good ships and bad ships across the length and breadth of the oceans.

  When they said good-bye, he made Wesley swear that whenever he heard he was in town he would come and have a meal with him again.

  Going downtown in the subway, with the gold-inlaid, hard leather box in his pocket, Wesley decided he was going to throw away his list. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead, he told himself, feeling a weight lifting from his heart.

  CHAPTER 3

  Rudolph was sitting on the deck in front of the house he had rented, looking out over the high dune at the stretch of white beach and the rollers of the open Atlantic. It was a mild, mid-September morning and the sun was pleasantly warm, reflecting off the script of Gretchen’s screenplay that he was rereading. Next to him, stretched out on an air mattress in a bathing suit, lay Helen Morison, who had a house farther down the beach, but who spent several nights a week with him. She was a divorcée, who had come over to him at a neighbor’s cocktail party and introduced herself because she recognized him. She was a friend of Gretchen’s. They had become acquainted at one of Ida Cohen’s Women’s Liberation meetings, where, according to Gretchen, Helen Morison’s ironic, efficient manner of presenting facts and programs was in marked contrast to Ida’s wild lunges at the perfidy of the male sex. Helen had no enmity toward the male sex, Rudolph had noted. “Quite the contrary,” he had told her and she had laughed and agreed. The fact that she was living on Mr. Morison’s alimony and sending her thirteen-year-old son to an exclusive, all-boys’ Episcopal school, also at Mr. Morison’s expense, did not seem to trouble her. Rudolph, who knew how often his own actions hardly reflected his principles, never pressed the point with her.

  She was a tall, slender woman, with a profile that could be stern in repose. She did not need a brassiere and she wore her dark, reddish-brown hair long and often put it up in the evenings when he came to take her to dinner. In a rigorously Republican community, she was at the forefront of the Democratic Party affairs and had lost friends in the process. She was one of those women who could be depended upon more than most men to act courageously in a disaster.

  She had been for her daily swim that morning, even though the sea was growing colder every night and the air was cool. She did not neglect her body. She made no secret of the fact that they were lovers.

  He was very fond of her. Perhaps more than that. But he was not the man to rush to expose his emotions or make declarations that would haunt him later, when all the facts were in, the emotions added up.

  For the moment he was engrossed hi Gretchen’s movie project. In rereading the screenplay he liked it more than ever. It was called Restoration Comedy, a play on words, since the plot involved the young heroine hi bullying, cajoling, begging and arguing an entire dying mill town in Pennsylvania, a fictitious community called Laundston, into restoring five streets of fine old town houses that had fallen into neglect when the mill had shut down. The script was full of the energy of the girl who, with guile, good looks, coquetry and a wild sense of humor, combined with a pragmatic, womanly attitude toward occasional dishonesty, captured cynical bankers, crooked politicians, starving young architects, lonely secretaries, stultified bureaucrats, failing contractors, dragooned college students into doing day-laborers’ work, in the process of creating an esthetically satisfactory, financially sound, middle-income suburb, which now, because of the new highways, was easily accessible to commuters from Philadelphia and Camden. The interesting part of it, to Rudolph, was that even though it was a complete work of fiction and no such place existed, it seemed to him, as a hardheaded businessman, like an eminently practical idea.

  He was not sure of two things, though: the title, which he thought smacked a little of a course in English literature, and Gretchen’s ability to bring it off. Still, it wasn’t only brotherly indulgence that had made him back Gretchen to the tune of a third of the film’s budget and spend countless hours with Johnny Heath wrangling over contracts in Gretchen’s behalf. Ida Cohen and Gretchen herself had found backers for the rest of the cost of the picture and given enough time could have got all the financing without him.

  It amused him, and he didn’t mind driving into New York twice a week for it, and now he didn’t have to say to friends that they could call at any time, he’d be at home all day.

  It had taken months and months to get this far and Rudolph had learned a great deal about the movie business, not all of it agreeable, but Gretchen had called to ask him to come to New York the next day, not in his capacity as an angel, but as an “idea man,” as she put it, because, when they were talking together about where to find a suitable location, he had suggested, half jokingly, their old hometown, Port Philip, where a whole quarter of great old houses had lain derelict for more than twenty years. Gretchen had gone up there with architects and the scene designer and they had all told Rudolph that the place was perfect and Gretchen was well on her way toward making a deal with the mayor and the town board to get all the help necessary for shooting the picture there. Rudolph was not sure he was ever going to visit the company on location. In the end, Port Philip and the neighboring town of Whitby did not have the most pleasant associations for him.

  He finished reading the script with a last little chuckle.

  “You still like it?” Helen asked.

  “More than ever.” He knew that Helen thought the script wasn’t openly partisan enough in its politics. She also said the same thing about his politics. “You have been numbed by the Cold War,” she said, “and the corruption in Washington and Vietnam and general hardening of the arteries. When was the last time you voted?”

  “I don’t remember,” he said, although he did—for Johnson in 1964. After that, the process had seemed footless.

  “Shame,” Helen said. She voted ferociously, whenever she got the opportunity. There was no hardening of the arteries for Helen Morison. “Don’t you think Gretchen needs a political adviser? I’d do it for free.”

  “I would think that’s the last thing she needs,” Rudolph said. “For free or no.”

  “I will finally convert you,” Helen said.

  “To what?”

  “Jeffersonian democracy,” she said. “Whatever that means.”

  “Please,” Rudolph said, “spare me Jeffersonian democracy. Whatever it means.”

  Helen chuckled. She had a nice, open chuckle. “Now,” she said, “this is the sort of place to talk about politics. On the beach in the sunshine after a nice brisk swim. There’d never be a war.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. Her skin was salty from the ocean. He wondered why he had gone so long without a woman since Jeanne. With Helen just a little way down the dunes from him there was no need to cross the sea. In recent years doctors had been publicly advocating regular sexual activity as a deterrent to heart disease. Think of Helen as a health measure, he thought with an inward smile, because he knew how furious she wou
ld be if he said it aloud. “In your own way,” he said lightly, “you are glorious.”

  “Have you ever paid a woman a compliment,” she asked, “without adding a modifying clause?”

  “I don’t remember,” he said. “Actually, I don’t remember any other women.”

  She laughed, mockingly. “Should I wear my scarlet letter into New York tomorrow?”

  “Don’t forget your wimple, either,” he said.

  “If we made love right out here, with me all salty and sandy and you thinking about money and contracts,” she said, “would the neighbors be shocked?”

  “No,” he said, “but I would.”

  “You’ve got a long way to go, brother,” she said.

  “You bet. And I won’t go there.”

  “After lunch? I’m cooking.”

  “What’re you cooking?”

  “Something light, nourishing and aphrodisiacal,” she said. “Like clam chowder. See how you feel at two P.M. The phone’s ringing inside.” She had a remarkably acute sense of hearing and he was always amused when she repeated, word for word, whispered conversations, usually malicious ones about herself, that she had somehow overheard across a noisy room while she was holding forth to two or three captive listeners on some pet subject of hers. “Should I answer it? I’ll say I’m the butler and that you’re upstairs doing your yoga and can’t be disturbed.”

  “I’ll take it,” he said. It still made him a little uneasy whenever she answered the phone and made it plain that she was very much at home in his house. “Just be here when I get back.”

  “Never fear,” she said. “This sun is sleepy-making.”

  He stood up and went into the house. The maid only came three times a week and this was not one of her days. As always, he was pleased with the way the house looked as he went through the big glass doors facing the sea and saw the pale wood and comfortable corduroy couches and the wide old polished planks of the floor of the living room.

  “Rudolph,” Gretchen said, “I’ve got a problem. Are you busy?”

  He repressed a sigh. Gretchen had at least one problem a week that she called him about. If she had a husband, he thought, her telephone bill would be decreased by half. Last week the problem had been Ida Cohen’s uncle, who had been a movie producer in Hollywood and had retired after a stroke. He was a shrewd old man who knew the business and when Ida had shown him the script he had volunteered to work for them, sitting in the little office in New York and wrangling with actors’ agents and coming up with ideas on casting and distribution and doing the daily dirty work of signing actors’ and technicians’ contracts and politely letting down candidates for jobs. But he had been sick for three days and Gretchen was afraid he’d had another stroke and she wanted to know what Rudolph thought she ought to do about Ida Cohen’s uncle. Rudolph had said talk to his doctor and Gretchen had found out that it was merely a head cold.

  Then there was the problem of Billy Abbott, which Gretchen had called Rudolph about in the middle of the night, her voice full of emotion. Billy’s father had telephoned from Chicago. “This time sober,” Gretchen had said, to underline the gravity of the situation. “Billy’s written his father,” Gretchen had said, “telling him he’s going to reenlist. Willie’s just as against it as I am. A professional noncom! That’s just what he and I wanted our son to be! Willie wants us both to go over to Brussels together to talk him out of it, but I can’t leave New York for a minute at this time, you know that. Then Willie suggested that I offer Billy a job on the picture—third assistant director, anything. But Billy doesn’t know the first thing about movies—I don’t think he’s seen three in his life—he’s not normal for this day and age—and he’s lazy and disloyal—and if he took the job it would be the same kind of nepotism that sent the old Hollywood studios into oblivion. Even if it didn’t mean much money, it would just be stealing from our backers, including you. I told Willie I couldn’t give him a job and I couldn’t go to Brussels and why didn’t he go himself and see what he could do and he said he didn’t have the money and would I advance the fare? Advance! Hah! Anyway, every cent I have I’ve got tied up in Restoration Comedy, and he said why didn’t I get it from you and I said I absolutely forbade him to approach you.” As the date for the actual shooting neared, Gretchen’s sentences had become more and more rushed and her voice had risen in tense crescendo. It was a bad sign, Rudolph felt, and would give rise to nervous explosions later.

  “How about you?” Gretchen had said, hesitant now. “You don’t have to be going over to Europe for anything, do you?”

  “No,” Rudolph had said. “I’ve finished with Europe for the time being. Anyway, what’s so terrible about having a son in the army?”

  “You know as well as I do,” Gretchen said, “that sooner or later there’s going to be another war.”

  “There’s nothing much either you or I can do about it,” Rudolph said. “Is there?”

  “You can say that,” she’d said. “You have a daughter.” And had hung up.

  Then there was the call about the problem of casting the role of the heroine’s younger brother, the part Gretchen had thought she wanted to test Wesley for. He was supposed to be beautiful and sad and cynical, constantly throwing cold water on his sister’s enthusiasm, given to repeating the line, “You can’t beat the numbers, man!” In the script, although he was supposed to be intellectually advanced far beyond his years and full of a variety of talents, he deliberately wasted himself, scornfully taking a job as a serviceman at the local airport and playing semiprofessional football on Sundays and consorting with the lowest and idlest and least salvageable of the ruffians of the town. Gretchen was sure, she said, that Wesley would be wonderful for it, just by the way he looked, with a minimum of acting, and none of the other boys she had tested had satisfied her and she had written to Wesley time and time again, but the letters had all been returned unclaimed, with no forwarding address, from General Delivery in Indianapolis. She wanted to know if Rudolph knew where to find Wesley, but Rudolph told her that he hadn’t heard from Wesley since the telephone call from Chicago. He had never told Gretchen about the warrant for Wesley’s arrest in Indianapolis. He was sure that Wesley would turn up eventually, but that wouldn’t help Gretchen with her casting now. He also doubted that Wesley could be useful as an actor. If Wesley had a single outstanding characteristic it was that he kept his emotions to himself, not the highest recommendation for a film career. Added to that there was Rudolph’s own unstated but ingrained snobbishness toward the profession of acting. Overpaid, narcissistic grown men at play, he would have said if pressed.

  From where he was standing at the phone in the living room he saw Helen rise from the air mattress and begin to do slow and difficult exercises, stretching, bending, like a ballet dancer, outlined in salt against the glittering sea. Gretchen’s voice in the receiver grated on his ears.

  “What’s the problem now?”

  “This one’s serious,” Gretchen said. She said the same thing about each of her problems, but he didn’t remind her of that. “Evans Kinsella called me this morning,” Gretchen said. “He just got in from California last night. He’s changed his mind. He wants to do Restoration Comedy himself now. He says he’s got two million to do it and major distribution and two stars. He’s ready to pay everybody off, with a profit of ten percent for all the backers.”

  “He’s a sonofabitch,” Rudolph said. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I had to think it over,” Gretchen said. “We have a date to meet at his hotel in a half hour.”

  “Talk to him,” Rudolph said, “and call me back. Say no, if you want to, but don’t yes until you’ve talked to me.” He hung up the phone. Ten percent on his investment in only two months, he thought. Not a bad return. Still, the idea of it gave him no pleasure. Outside, on the deck, Helen was still doing her exercises. After Gretchen’s call he could use the aphrodisiacal lunch this afternoon.

  Gretchen carefully put on her makeup, fl
uffed up her hair, chose her smartest suit and dabbed herself with Femme, a perfume that Evans had once said he liked on her. Ida Cohen would not have approved, she thought, heightening her femininity, making herself the alluring female animal for what, being realistic, was merely a business appointment, and one with unsavory overtones at that. At my age, it gets harder and harder, Gretchen thought, looking in the full-length mirror, to make myself into an alluring female animal. Getting to sleep these nights was difficult, and she had been taking pills and it showed. Damn Evans Kinsella. She put on an extra dab of perfume.

  Evans was freshly shaved and was wearing a jacket and tie when she went up to his apartment in the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. He usually met her in his shirt-sleeves or in a robe when he summoned her to his place. He had decided on charm for this meeting. She felt a tingling all over her body as he kissed her first on one cheek then on the other, a salutation he had brought back with him when he had made a picture in Paris. She resented her body for the tingle.

  In the ornate salon with him was Richard Sanford, the young author of Restoration Comedy, dressed, as usual, in an open-necked wool shirt, a windbreaker, jeans and high, unpolished boots. Careless, unconventional poverty was the public expression of his background and his beliefs. Gretchen wondered what he would dress like in Hollywood after his third picture. He was a pleasant young man, with a wide, slow smile and respectful manner, and had always been most friendly with Gretchen in all their dealings. Although she had been seeing him almost every day, he had never mentioned that he even knew Kinsella. Conspiracy was the word that crossed her mind.