The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  I was, as I have said, twelve years old that summer. I can now mark it as the time I learned that there was a difference between seeing things in the movies and seeing them in real life. Because never in watching the most bruising movie, with Tom Mix or Hoot Gibson or any of my heroes, did I feel what I felt there watching what happened to that little man. And I think that Iggy must have felt it even more acutely than I did, because he was so small and skinny himself, and while he was tough in a fight he was always being outweighed and overpowered. He must have felt that he was right there inside that little man, his arms pinned tight behind his back by the bully who had grabbed him, while Mr Rose hit him back and forth with an open hand across the face, snarling at him all the while.

  ‘You dirty dog,’ Mr Rose said. ‘Do you know who I am? Do you think I’m one of those lousy small-time bootleggers you double-cross for the fun of it? This is who I am!’ And with the little man screaming and kicking out at him he started punching away as hard as he could at the belly and face until the screaming and kicking suddenly stopped. Then he jerked his head toward the pond, and his pal heaved the little man right into it headfirst, the straw hat flying off and bobbing up and down in the water a few feet away.

  They stood watching until the man in the water managed to get on his hands and knees, blowing out dirty water, shaking his head in a daze, and then without another word they walked off toward the car. I heard its doors slam, and the roar of the motor as it moved off, and then the sound faded away.

  All I wanted to do then was get away from there. What I had just seen was too much to comprehend or even believe in; it was like waking up from a nightmare to find it real. Home was where I wanted to be.

  I stood up cautiously, but before I could scramble off to home and safety, Iggy clutched the back of my shirt so hard that he almost pulled me down on top of him.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ he whispered hotly. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  I pulled myself free. ‘Are you crazy?’ I whispered back. ‘You expect to hang around here all night? I’m going home, that’s where I’m going.’

  Iggy’s face was ashy white, his nostrils flaring. ‘But that guy’s hurt. You just gonna let him stay there?’

  ‘Sure I’m gonna let him stay there. What’s it my business?’

  ‘You saw what happened. You think it’s right to beat up a guy like that?’

  What he said and the way he said it in a tight, choked voice made me wonder if he really had gone crazy just then. I said weakly, ‘It’s none of my business, that’s all. Anyhow, I have to go home. My folks’ll be sore if I don’t get home on time.’

  Iggy pointed an accusing finger at me. ‘All right, if that’s the way you feel!’ he said, and then before I could stop him he turned and dashed out of concealment toward the pond. Whether it was the sense of being left alone in a hostile world, or whether it was some wild streak of loyalty that acted on me, I don’t know. But I hesitated only an instant and then ran after him.

  He stood at the edge of the pond looking at the man in it who was still on his hands and knees and shaking his head vaguely from side to side. ‘Hey, mister,’ Iggy said, and there was none of the assurance in his voice that there had been before, ‘are you hurt?’

  The man looked slowly around at us, and his face was fearful to behold. It was bruised and swollen and glassy-eyed, and his dripping hair hung in long strings down his forehead. It was enough to make Iggy and me back up a step, the way he looked.

  With a great effort he pushed himself to his feet and stood there swaying. Then he lurched forward, staring at us blindly, and we hastily backed up a few more steps. He stopped short and suddenly reached down and scooped up a handful of mud from under the water.

  ‘Get out of here!’ he cried like a woman screaming. ‘Get out of here, you little sneaks!’ – and without warning flung the mud at us.

  It didn’t hit me, but it didn’t have to. I let out one yell of panic and ran wildly, my heart thudding, my legs pumping as fast as they could. Iggy was almost at my shoulder – I could hear him gasping as we climbed the smoldering hill of refuse that barred the way to the avenue, slid down the other side in a cloud of dirt and ashes, and raced toward the avenue without looking back. It was only when we reached the first street-light that we stopped and stood there trembling, our mouths wide open, trying to suck in air, our clothes fouled from top to bottom.

  But the shock I had undergone was nothing compared to what I felt when Iggy finally got his wind back enough to speak up.

  ‘Did you see that guy?’ he said, still struggling for breath.

  ‘Did you see what they did to him? Come on, I’m gonna tell the cops.’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘The cops? What do you want to get mixed up with the cops for? What do you care what they did to him, for Pete’s sake?’

  ‘Because they beat him up, didn’t they? And the cops can stick them in jail for fifty years if somebody tells them, and I’m a witness. I saw what happened and so did you. So you’re a witness too.’

  I didn’t like it. I certainly had no sympathy for the evil-looking apparition from which I had just fled, and, more than that, I balked at the idea of having anything to do with the police. It was just that, like most other kids I knew, I was nervous in the presence of a police uniform. It left me even more mystified by Iggy than ever. The idea of any kid voluntarily walking up to report something to a policeman was beyond comprehension.

  I said bitterly, ‘All right, so I’m a witness. But why can’t the guy that got beat up go and tell the cops about it? Why do we have to go and do it?’

  ‘Because he wouldn’t tell anybody about it. Didn’t you see the way he was scared of Mr Rose? You think it’s all right for Mr Rose to go around like that, beating up anybody he wants to, and nobody does anything about it?’

  Then I understood. Beneath all this weird talk, this sudden display of nobility, was solid logic, something I could get hold of. It was not the man in the water Iggy was concerned with, it was himself. Mr Rose had pushed him around, and now he had a perfect way of getting even.

  I didn’t reveal this thought to Iggy, though, because when your best friend has been shoved around and humiliated in front of you, you don’t want to remind him of it. But at least it put everything into proper perspective. Somebody hurts you, so you hurt him back, and that’s all there is to it.

  It also made it much easier to go along with Iggy in his plan. I wasn’t really being called on to ally myself with some stupid grownup who had got into trouble with Mr Rose; I was being a good pal to Iggy.

  All of a sudden, the prospect of walking into the police station and telling my story to somebody seemed highly intriguing. And, the reassuring thought went, far in back of my head, none of this could mean trouble for me later on, because tomorrow I was moving to Manhattan anyhow; wasn’t I?

  So I was right there, a step behind Iggy, when we walked up between the two green globes which still seemed vaguely menacing to me, and into the police station. There was a tall desk there, like a judge’s bench, at which a gray-haired man sat writing, and at its foot was another desk at which sat a very fat uniformed man reading a magazine. He put the magazine down when we approached and looked at us with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  I had been mentally rehearsing a description of what I had seen back there on the golf course, but I never had a chance to speak my piece. Iggy started off with a rush, and there was no way of getting a word in. The fat man listened with a puzzled expression, every now and then pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. Then he looked up at the one behind the tall desk and said, ‘Hey, sergeant, here’s a couple of kids say they saw an assault over at Dyker Heights. You want to listen to this?’

  The sergeant didn’t even look at us, but kept on writing. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with your ears?’

  The fat policeman leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘I d
on’t know,’ he said, ‘only it seems to me some guy named Rose is mixed up in this.’

  The sergeant suddenly stopped writing. ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Some guy named Rose,’ the fat policeman said, and he appeared to be enjoying himself a good deal. ‘You know anybody with that name who drives a big gray Packard?’

  The sergeant motioned with his head for us to come right up to the platform his desk was on. ‘All right, kid,’ he said to Iggy, ‘what’s bothering you?’

  So Iggy went through it again, and when he was finished the sergeant just sat there looking at him, tapping his pen on the desk. He looked at him so long and kept tapping that pen so steadily – tap, tap, tap – that my skin started to crawl. It didn’t surprise me when he finally said to Iggy in a hard voice, ‘You’re a pretty wise kid.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Iggy said. ‘I saw it!’ He pointed at me. ‘He saw it, too. He’ll tell you!’

  I braced myself for the worst and then noted with relief that the sergeant was paying no attention to me. He shook his head at Iggy and said, ‘I do the telling around here, kid. And I’m telling you you’ve got an awful big mouth for someone your size. Don’t you have more sense than to go around trying to get people into trouble?’

  This, I thought, was the time to get away from there, because if I ever needed proof that you don’t mix into grownup business I had it now. But Iggy didn’t budge. He was always pretty good at arguing himself out of spots where he was wrong; now that he knew he was right he was getting hot with outraged virtue.

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’ he demanded. ‘For Pete’s sake, I was right there when it happened! I was this close!’

  The sergeant looked like a thundercloud. ‘All right, you were that close,’ he said. ‘Now beat it, kid, and keep that big mouth shut. I got no time to fool around any more. Go on, get out of here!’

  Iggy was so enraged that not even the big gold badge a foot from his nose could intimidate him now. ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me. Wait’ll I tell my father. You’ll see!’

  I could hear my ears ringing in the silence that followed. The sergeant sat staring at Iggy, and Iggy, a little scared by his own outburst, stared back. He must have had the same idea I did then. Yelling at a cop was probably as bad as hitting one, and we’d both end up in jail for the rest of our lives. Not for a second did I feel any of the righteous indignation Iggy did. As far as I was concerned, he had led me into this trap, and I was going to pay for his lunacy. I guess I hated him then even more than the sergeant did.

  It didn’t help any when the sergeant finally turned to the fat policeman with the air of a man who had made up his mind.

  ‘Take the car and drive over to Rose’s place,’ he said. ‘You can explain all this to him, and ask him to come along back with you. Oh yes, and get this kid’s name and address, and bring his father along, too. Then we’ll see.’

  So I had my first and only experience of sitting on a bench in a police station watching the pendulum of the big clock on the wall swinging back and forth, and recounting all my past sins to myself. It couldn’t have been more than a half hour before the fat policeman walked in with Mr Rose and Iggy’s father, but it seemed like a year. And a long, miserable year at that.

  The surprising thing was the way Mr Rose looked. I had half expected them to bring him in fighting and struggling, because while the sergeant may not have believed Iggy’s story, Mr Rose would know it was so.

  But far from struggling, Mr Rose looked as if he had dropped in for a friendly visit. He was dressed in a fine summer suit and sporty-looking black-and-white shoes and he was smoking a cigar. He was perfectly calm and pleasant, and, in some strange way, he almost gave the impression that he was in charge there.

  It was different with Iggy’s father. Mr Kovac must have been reading the paper out on the porch in his undershirt, because his regular shirt had been stuffed into his pants carelessly and part of it hung out. And from his manner you’d think that he was the one who had done something wrong. He kept swallowing hard, and twisting his neck in his collar, and now and then glancing nervously at Mr Rose. He didn’t look at all impressive as he did at other times.

  The sergeant pointed at Iggy. ‘All right, kid,’ he said, ‘Now tell everybody here what you told me. Stand up so we can all hear it.’

  Since Iggy had already told it twice he really had it down pat now, and he told it without a break from start to finish, no one interrupting him. And all the while Mr Rose stood there listening politely, and Mr Kovac kept twisting his neck in his collar.

  When Iggy was finished the sergeant said, ‘I’ll put it to you straight out, Mr Rose. Were you near that golf course today?’

  Mr Rose smiled. ‘I was not.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said the sergeant. ‘But you can see what we’re up against.’

  ‘Sure I can,’ said Mr Rose. He went over to Iggy and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘And you know what?’ he said. ‘I don’t even blame the kid for trying this trick. He and I had a little trouble some time back about the way he was always climbing over my car, and I guess he’s just trying to get square with me. I’d say he’s got a lot of spirit in him. Don’t you, sonny?’ he asked, squeezing Iggy’s shoulder in a friendly way.

  I was stunned by the accuracy of this shot, but Iggy reacted like a firecracker going off. He pulled away from Mr Rose’s hand and ran over to his father. ‘I’m not lying!’ he said desperately and grabbed Mr Kovac’s shirt, tugging at it. ‘Honest to God, pop, we both saw it. Honest to God, pop!’

  Mr Kovac looked down at him and then looked around at all of us. When his eyes were on Mr Rose it seemed as if his collar were tighter than ever. Meanwhile, Iggy was pulling at his shirt, yelling that we saw it, we saw it, and he wasn’t lying, until Mr Kovac shook him once, very hard, and that shut him up.

  ‘Iggy,’ said Mr Kovac, ‘I don’t want you to go around telling stories about people. Do you hear me?’

  Iggy heard him, all right. He stepped back as if he had been walloped across the face, and then stood there looking at Mr Kovac in a funny way. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even move when Mr Rose came up and put a hand on his shoulder again.

  ‘You heard your father, didn’t you, kid?’ Mr Rose said.

  Iggy still didn’t say anything.

  ‘Sure you did,’ Mr Rose said. ‘And you and I understand each other a lot better now, kiddo, so there’s no hard feelings. Matter of fact, any time you want to come over to the house you come on over, and I’ll bet there’s plenty of odd jobs you can do there. I pay good, too, so don’t you worry about that.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a bill. ‘Here,’ he said, stuffing it into Iggy’s hand, ‘this’ll give you an idea. Now go on out and have yourself some fun.’

  Iggy looked at the money like a sleepwalker. I was baffled by that. As far as I could see, this was a triumph, and here was Iggy in a daze, instead of openly rejoicing. It was only when the sergeant spoke to us that he seemed to wake up.

  ‘All right, you kids,’ the sergeant said, ‘beat it home now. The rest of us got some things to talk over.’

  I didn’t need a second invitation. I got out of there in a hurry and went down the street fast, with Iggy tagging along behind me not saying a word. It was three blocks down and one block over, and I didn’t slow down until I was in front of my house again. I had never appreciated those familiar outlines and lights in the windows any more than I did at that moment. But I didn’t go right in. It suddenly struck me that this was the last time I’d be seeing Iggy, so I waited there awkwardly. I was never very good at goodbyes.

  ‘That was all right,’ I said finally. ‘I mean Mr Rose giving you that dollar. That’s as good as twenty golf balls.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Iggy, and he was looking at me in the same funny way he had looked at his father. ‘I’ll bet it’s as good as a whole new golf club. Come on down to Leo’s with me, and I’ll show you.’

  I wanted to, but I wanted to get insi
de the house even more. ‘Ahh, my folks’ll be sore if I stay out too late tonight,’ I said. ‘Anyhow, you can’t buy a club for a dollar. You’ll need way more than that.’

  ‘You think so?’ Iggy said, and then held out his hand and slowly opened it so that I could see what he was holding. It was not a one-dollar bill. It was, to my awe, a five-dollar bill.

  That, as my wife said, was a long time ago. Thirty-five years before a photograph was taken of little Ignace Kovac, a man wise in the way of the rackets, slumped in a death agony over the wheel of his big car, a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, a bag of golf clubs leaning against the seat next to him. Thirty-five years before I understood the meaning of the last things said and done when we faced each other on a street in Brooklyn, and then went off, each in his own direction.

  I gaped at the money in Iggy’s hand. It was the hoard of Croesus, and its very magnitude alarmed me.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That’s five bucks. That’s a lot of money! You better give it to your old man, or he’ll really jump on you.’

  Then I saw to my surprise that the hand holding the money was shaking. Iggy was suddenly shuddering all over as if he had just plunged into icy water.

  ‘My old man?’ he yelled wildly at me, and his lips back showing his teeth clenched together hard, as if that could stop the shuddering. ‘You know what I’ll do if my old man tries anything? I’ll tell Mr Rose on him, that’s what! Then you’ll see!’

  And wheeled and ran blindly away from me down the street to his destiny.

  Beidenbauer’s Flea

  I was seated on a bench in Central Park, half drowsing in the autumn sunlight, when a strange figure approached – the cadaverous figure of a man who bore himself with the grandeur of an ancient matinee idol. As he walked, he swung a malacca stick with practiced ease. His hair was snowy-white and swept back almost to his collar, and on it was cocked with indescribable panache a battered homburg. His tight-waisted, velveteen-collared overcoat was long out of fashion and badly frayed at the cuffs. His narrow-toed, patent-leather shoes were scuffed and down at the heels. Yet, so noble was his demeanor and so profound the sorrow written on his lined face that I found myself pitying his curious garb, rather than being moved to scorn by it.