World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  Johno was eating an egg sandwich on a seed roll. He always eats the first half of a sandwich in one bite. He keeps it in the side of his mouth and swallows it as he goes along. He had the Daily News open to the sports section. Under his elbow was the brown manila envelope with the evidence for court.

  “You watch the Knicks last night?” he said.

  “No.”

  “I watched the Knicks game,” he said.

  “Good game?” Dermot said.

  “Bradley done pretty good.” When Johno watches a basketball game, he only sees the white players. The Knicks usually play two of them. If one white guy doesn’t have the ball, or if one of them isn’t guarding somebody with the ball, Johno doesn’t know what’s going on in the game. Because he only watches the white guys. Then in the morning Johno only looks up the white guys in the box score. He reads how many shots they took, how many assists they had, the points they got. Sometimes he doesn’t even know who won the game.

  There was a seat at the other end of the counter, nearest the door. Dermot went down to it. He sat with his elbow hemmed in by the cash register. He ordered coffee and an English muffin. A few feet away, at a long table set against the coffeeshop window, five lawyers sat over coffee and talked with the owner, a bald man with a body consisting of a white apron wrapped around a barrel. The lawyers tripped a small anger cord inside Dermot. One of them had mutton chops turning to white at the bottoms, and the mutton chops ran into the collar of a salmon-pink shirt. Another had very little hair, but it had been so arranged and blown and trimmed by razor that it looked as full and almost as unnatural as a toupee. Another one was wearing glasses that were so thick Dermot tried to make up his mind whether the lawyer looked like a frog or a trout. The one with the thick glasses was short and pudgy and his hair seemed to have been trimmed one strand at a time. Dermot knew the pudgy lawyer’s last name. Klein. Klein began talking so loud that Dermot had to listen to him whether he wanted to or not.

  “The one kid of mine this morning, he’s sixteen, he comes into the bathroom while I’m shaving. He says, ‘I got to talk to you.’ I go really, what about? I keep looking at the mirror shaving. He says, ‘I think you’re fucking around.’ I just keep shaving. Humming while I’m shaving. I go dum dee dee dum do, and he says, ‘Yep, I think you’re fucking somebody. You can’t bullshit me you’re out till three four in the morning on business.’ I keep the razor moving. Do do dum dee dum. Then what do you think he says? He says, ‘Well, I guess it’s all right. It relieves the tension at home.’ How do you like him. Talking like that at sixteen? Then he says to me, ‘Well, of course, if it’s only one girl, then I don’t know about that. That would be bad. That would mean you’re in love with another woman. It would kill Mom.’”

  “What did you say to him?” one of the others asked him.

  “Nothing,” Klein said. “I just kept humming and shaving.”

  “What did the kid do?”

  “He finished talking and went to school.”

  “You still better watch,” one of them said. “Do you remember in Death of a Salesman when the son catches the father in the hotel room with a hooker? Remember what that did to the kid? It may be all right for your kid to talk like he does. But it could be a lot different if he found it to be true.”

  “Not with kids today,” the first lawyer said.

  “I know, they’re so different,” the other guy said. “That’s why Arthur Miller is as good today as he was twenty years ago. Come off it.”

  “All I know is I love to fuck my girl friend,” Klein said.

  A black kid came up to the register. The old woman who takes the money was dumping water into the coffee urn at the middle of the counter. The black kid took a toothpick from the glass alongside the cash register. He stood there with the toothpick hanging from his lower lip.

  “Say, my lady,” the black kid said.

  “One minute please,” the old lady said.

  “Whose minute you play with?” The toothpick worked up and down. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a real good jacket. Dermot’s leg began pumping under the counter. An old black woman came up behind him. She was wearing a thin cloth coat. Bet me it had half the warmth of the kid’s leather jacket. She went through her cracked purse and came out with a dollar.

  “Say, my lady, le’s go,” He was tapping his fingernails on the top of the cash register.

  “Henry,” the black woman said.

  “Henry, my ass. Hey, old lady, le’s go.”

  The woman came down to the cash register. She was drying her hands on the front of the apron. The hands were scalded. When the mother got her change, the kid walked ahead of her to the door. There was no way not to notice his cowboy boots, boots with the thickest soles you ever saw. Had to cost fifty dollars for low. The kid swung the door open and went out. The mother shuffled behind him. She had her head down while she put the change into her purse. The door swinging back hit her.

  “You see that?” the counterlady said.

  Dermot paid for the coffee and muffin and went through the door. Outside, the sidewalks were wet from the rock salt which had melted the snow during the night. At the curb there was a wall of dirty snow—newspapers, and cigar butts stuck in it. The old black woman balanced herself on one foot on top of the pile of snow. The son in his thick boots was already halfway across Queens Boulevard. The old woman steadied herself and stepped down off the pile of snow onto the street Then she didn’t move. Dermot stepped over the top of the snow and here was the old woman standing in a long puddle of black ice water that was up to the top of her shoes. Her stockings were dark with the water. She was almost crying. He jumped over the puddle and turned around and held out his arm. “Let’s go, here you are,” he said to the woman. She took his arm and came out of the water. “Look at me, now I gots to go all mornin’ maybe sittin’ like this. I gots to be sick, doin’ this.”

  The mother rolled like a boat when she walked. The wet stockings bunched up on her thick ankles. He got her to one of the traffic islands in the middle of the boulevard, slipped his arm away, and walked by himself.

  The son was on the other side of the boulevard already, swaggering along. You could see that he was singing out loud. Nigger is the only person in the world sings going to court, Dermot thought. There was a break in the traffic and Dermot trotted through the last lane and came onto the sidewalk. The kid stopped to light a cigarette. Dermot was walking up almost behind him now. The sidewalk in front of the courthouse was empty. It gets like that on a cold morning. One minute a bus comes and there are a hundred people running into the courthouse. After that, there might be nobody. The kid had his cigarette lighted. He was starting to walk again. He still hadn’t turned around to see where the mother was. Dermot took one big step and was walking right behind him. He hit the kid in the space between the bottom of his Brillo hair and the collar of his leather jacket. The Brillo head went flying forward and he fell down. Dermot didn’t look. He just walked fast, as if nothing had happened, and turned into the courthouse. The room where the police check in is just inside the entrance. He went into the corner of the room and sat at a desk and picked up a Daily News and put his face into it. The room was filled with cops signing in. The rules are you have to be all signed in and sitting in the courtroom at nine-thirty. It was nine now.

  “Who can I report?”

  Dermot put the paper closer to his face.

  “Report what, ma’ am?” one of the cops said.

  “My son just got hit by a cop.”

  “What do you mean, he just got hit?”

  “Jes’ outside the courthouse. No reason at all, this cop hits my son right in the back of the head. I was walkin’ right behind and I could see it. Henry! Come in here, Henry. You tell the man, Henry.”

  “Man hit me from behind and knocks me down.”

  “Now wait a minute,” another of the policemen said.

  “You say it happened right outside here?”

  “Right outside.�
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  “And you saw it?”

  “Yes, I did. I was walking right behind my son.”

  “And it was a policeman in uniform?”

  “No.”

  “Well then how do you know this man was an officer?”

  “He come in here.”

  “Here? In this room?”

  “Yes, he did. I see him just as he turn in.”

  “Well, lady, many people come in here. Do you see him right now?”

  Everybody in the room was moving around. Somebody called out excuse me and left. Another guy said excuse me very loud and walked out.

  “Tell me, did anybody else see this man who struck your son?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “Uh uh.”

  “But you know this man who struck your son when you see him?”

  “Sure do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He cursed at me ’cross the street by the luncheonette.”

  “He cursed at you?”

  “Sure did. He try to get past me on the street and when I don’t move fast enough he call me a bad name.”

  “What bad name did the officer call you?”

  “Double motherfucker.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, he did. He call me that and then he hit my son.”

  “Now wait a minute. All right? That’s no language for a lady.”

  “I don’t say that. The cop the one call me that.”

  “Say, what time is it getting to be? What brings you to court today anyway?”

  “Judge Levine courtroom,” the mother said.

  “What for?”

  “Somethin’.”

  “What something?”

  “Somebody say that he take a television out of an apartment.”

  “Oh, he’s here for housebreaking?”

  “He not. The superintendent tries to say so. Henry nowhere near that day.”

  “But you still have to be in court for this today?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Any bail on your case?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Five hundred? Well Jesus, lady, what are you doing here? You better get right into court so they don’t mark you missing. If they do that, they’ll revoke the boy’s bail. You can lose five hundred just standing here. You go to the courtroom right now and when you’re through you come back here and we’ll have the complaint forms ready for you.”

  “Right back here?”

  “Right back here.”

  “All right.”

  After they left the room, the cop said, “Whoever did it better get the hell out of here.”

  Dermot dropped the paper and ran to the door. The guys all laughed. “Dinge’ll be rubbin’ his neck all day,” the lieutenant who runs the room said.

  The hallway was so crowded you couldn’t see to the other end. The building’s smell was a thick municipal smell. Disinfectant, cigarette smoke, overcoats against radiators, green cleaning dust, folded newspapers, hair tonic. The only ones laughing in the hallway were policemen. The rest of the noise, all up and down the hall, was made by a lot of people making a lot of little noise. A lawyer near Dermot, a sharp guy in a three-piece suit, started backing away from a family group. “I have to be upstairs in Part Six for a few minutes and then I’ll be back. Just go in and sit down and if they call you, go up and say your lawyer is in another part and he’ll be right down.” An old woman in a black kerchief said, “But why can’t you… ?” The lawyer was gone already. That’s all you hear from the families, “But why can’t you… ?” The old women stand in the hallway and their faces are pouchy gray. The younger ones, the girl friends and wives, talk in whispers and bite their lips when they don’t talk. The guys they come for, the defendants, smoke cigarettes and bitch that they even have to be in court. “For bullshit,” they keep saying. Always bullshit. A holdup. Bullshit. Grand larceny. Bullshit. Assault. Bullshit. Dimes binged in the pay phones.

  The floor was covered with newspapers already and shoe heels made a scraping sound when they caught the newspapers. Dermot stood outside the doorway to the police room and looked down at his cigarette. At nine-thirty he went into the courtroom, Part Three. He sat in the front row. The room was crowded. Johno was standing at the table with the Assistant District Attorney, Carty. The Assistant was starting to read the complaint. While Dermot stood alongside them, he looked around and saw these two kids in the third row. Twins. Cuomo was their name. They had on dungaree jackets. One of them had his hair down over his ears. He didn’t look as bad as the brother. The brother had hair all over his shoulders. The mother was sitting with them. She had a knitting-mill face.

  The hearing was to determine if there was enough evidence to have a trial against the twins. They wouldn’t plead to a possession of. It’s like spitting, but they wouldn’t plead. They wanted to go to bat on the case. The judge came in. Curtin, a big fat guy with a sunburn you get at night. He used to be an assistant district attorney. The bridge man had a long calendar to call out. When they came to the twins’ case, the judge put it off until the afternoon. Which didn’t bother Dermot. He had the day to stand in the hallway and talk with guys he knew, go for a cup of coffee, get the afternoon paper, hang out. In the hallway he saw the Cuomo mother looking nervous on the phone. She was probably calling her job to tell them how she wouldn’t be able to come in for the afternoon either.

  It was almost a quarter after three in the afternoon before they got to the twins. Carty, the Assistant District Attorney, called Johno up before the case came on. Then he called Dermot. He was going over the complaint sheet. “No,” he said to Johno, “it doesn’t say so here.”

  “All right then,” Johno said. “Dermot, don’t say anything about the money because you don’t have nothin’ about money written up in the complaint.”

  “I never said anything about money,” Dermot said.

  “Your partner here told me that you saw one of the defendants get five dollars passed to him and then he passes the marijuana to the buyer.”

  “Yeah, well, you see,” Johno said.

  “All I see is what you have on paper. All I care about is that you don’t go one inch past what you state in the complaint.”

  “It’s all right,” Johno said.

  “Just make sure.”

  On this arrest, Johno had gotten out of the car and done everything himself. Dermot never even saw what was going on. Johno came back to the car and threw the twins in the back of the car. The minute they got back to the precinct Johno started whining. He had forgotten that he had to pick up his wife at his sister’s. That was way out on Long Island, in Commack. It takes seven or eight hours sometimes, when a policeman arrests somebody. Defendants have to be taken for fingerprinting and photos and then to court for the arraignment. To avoid this, Johno talked Dermot into putting Paltrolman Davey down as the arresting officer. Johno went home. Dermot had to stay making out papers and getting the twins to court for arraignment on a case he never knew anything about.

  Now Carty had the envelope with the evidence open. He was reading the report from the Police Laboratory. Johno looked over his shoulder. He came flopping over to Dermot.

  “They’ll shit,” he whispered.

  “So?”

  “They found something else in there besides marijuana.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, some long thing. I just see it on the report.”

  Dermot went over to have a look. “Did you know about this?” Carty said to him.

  “What?”

  “They found a drug called phencyclidine mixed in with the marijuana.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s what they call angel dust. I don’t know. I know that it makes this different. It’s listed as a dangerous drug. I have to go upstairs and ask them what they want to do about it. I don’t think I’m allowed to handle it just like another marijuana case.”

  “They must of got it off some guy home
from Vietnam,” Johno said.

  “I’m talking only to the arresting officer,” Carty said.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Dermot said.

  “That’s exactly right. You don’t know anything except what you have sworn to on this complaint.”

  When the case was called, the attorney for the kids and Carty and the judge were talking up at the bench. The lawyer turned around and whispered to the mother and the two kids. The kids came out of their chairs together.

  “He’s lyin’!” one of them yelled.

  “He wasn’t even there!” the other one said.

  The attorney got a hand on each of their shoulders and pushed them down.

  Dermot sat in the front row and looked straight ahead. He didn’t move. When your body moves in a courtroom it always gives something away. It wasn’t easy, because Johno had started the whole thing. He got out of the car and ran over to the kids and started the hassle. Dermot never asked him, but it figured he’d put the sticks of shit on them. But where did Johno get the sticks with this drug, whatever the hell it was, in the marijuana. Could they move the thing up to a felony on these kids? Well, it was too late for that now.

  Johno leaned over. “They deserve it. Look at the two of them. Did you ever see such walking shit in your life?”

  The judge said something and Carty called Dermot and told him to take the stand.

  Carty asked him to tell about the arrest.

  “While I was on patrol in my sector at eight-thirty in the morning I observed the two defendants in front of seventy-twenty-two Sixty-seventh Place. They were in an automobile. The doors were open. One defendant sat in the front seat, the other in the back seat. I was driving slowly along Seventieth Avenue when I observed a group of young boys and girls around the open doors of the automobile. I slowed my car down. I observed one of the young boys stepping up to the open car door, the front door, and then after a very short time walking away. I became suspicious. I stopped the patrol car and got out. The young people at the curb quickly dispersed. The Cuomo twins were in the car when I came up. One in the front, one in the back. Immediately I detected the odor of marijuana. Immediately I advised them of their rights. I then asked the defendants to empty their pockets. When they did so, on the ground, at their feet, I observed four marijuana cigarettes, two of which apparently had recently been snuffed out. They made no statement to me. I placed them under arrest.” The two kids were sliding all over the bench. The pros never move. They sit there and they don’t even blink when you do it to them. Amateurs like these two kids start twisting around. The mouth always open. One of them slapped himself in the face and grabbed his hair.