Handling Sin

by Malone, Michael

  Sheerly by the pressure of his back muscles, Boyd snapped a dowel out of the Sheraton chair. “Ned Ware,” he said.

  “Ned Ware. Ah.” Removing his glasses, Raleigh studied the stem hinge. “Well, now. Now, come on. We all know Ned. Don’t we?…I’ll tell you something. Do you know that fathead is actually going around town saying that my father ran off with a black teenager?! Now, really! Be honest with me, Boyd. I bet you heard that from Ned Ware, didn’t you? Didn’t Ned tell you that?”

  The miserable Joyner was staring at his fist.

  “Didn’t he, Boyd?”

  “…Yeah. Well, I heard him saying it to some other guys.”

  “Well, really! Ha ha. Told you my seventy-year-old father, an ordained minister, ha ha…Well, that should give us some idea of what to think of anything Ned Ware chooses to spew out of his sewer of a fat mouth! Ha ha. Right?”

  Joyner cracked his knuckles. Eventually, he growled, “I know Jimson was here. If there was somebody with him, I’ll find it the cocksucking out.”

  It was following this, indeed, clairvoyant remark that Raleigh tossed Pierce Jimson like Jezebel down into the street of dogs. “Okay, Boyd, I’m going to level with you, embarrassing as it is. I’d hoped not to have to say this. Sit back down. SIT. SIT!”

  Those formative years in the Marines had left Joyner vulnerable to direct commands. He sat. And Hayes recklessly continued. “As a matter of fact, I did see Jimson here in the inn. The Sheffields and Aura and I are here on, ah, a business matter. And well—now, please keep this confidential, let me have your word of honor, because even they don’t know—I did happen to see, to accidentally run into Pierce. And I’m sorry to have to say, he did have a woman with him. But I assure you, Boyd. I assure you. This woman was just some little tramp.”

  Boyd Joyner stared at Raleigh Hayes, known to everybody in Thermopylae as good old, fair-and-square, honest, decent Raleigh, and good old Raleigh stared back as long as he could bear to, at which point he began polishing his glasses. “So, Boyd. There’s some other explanation. Where is Lizzie? Perhaps called away on an emergency? Perhaps her car stalled?”

  Confused, Joyner scratched with both hands at his unshaved face. “She’s supposed to be in Columbia at her mother’s.”

  “Columbia, South Carolina?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to call her.”

  “No, don’t.”

  “Listen, don’t worry. I’m not going to charge it to you. I’ve got a card.”

  “It’s not that…Don’t you think it’s a little early?…It’s only seven twenty-four.…” But Joyner was already at the phone, and Raleigh was halfheartedly searching for something unbreakable to hit him with, when the cursed call went through.

  “Ma Leviston? It’s Boyd. I want the truth. Is Lizzie there?”

  Hayes picked up an iron doorstop. “Now, even if she isn’t…let’s not jump to any false conclusion…Let’s not exhaust other—”

  “…Lizzie? Yeah, it’s Boyd.…Nah, I’m…at home.…Nah, I’m okay.…Yeah, I know what time it is, but you weren’t there last night, and I like knowing where my wife is.…Well, she said she didn’t expect you till Thursday.…Well, okay, I know she is, but you should have told me if the car…Well, but you could have called from the garage…Well, okay, but.…”

  Sweat was dripping down Raleigh’s sides like ice water, as his mind burned. It must be a two-hour drive to Columbia. They must have left the inn within an hour after his encounter with them. Someone from Thermopylae must have warned them that Boyd was on his way. Probably Ned himself. Now he, Raleigh Hayes, was the accessory of an adulteress, God help him. And an adulteress with execrable taste, to boot.

  “Well, what was that all about?” asked Aura, returning to their room soon after Joyner had left it to drive back to Thermopylae to kill Ned Ware. “What’s Boyd doing here?”

  Hayes, exhausted, had climbed into bed. “Don’t ask.…What are the Sheffields up to?”

  She waggled her eyebrows. “My guess would be S-E-X.”

  “I’m sick of sex!”

  Halfway into the bed, she sprang back out. “You know, I think I ought to find that remark insulting, considering.”

  “Aura, I’m sorry.” Raleigh reached for her. “I don’t mean you. I mean that goddamn Pierce Jimson.”

  She turned his head toward her. “Honey, after you get Earley back home, I’d like you to seriously consider seeing a psychiatrist.”

  “Aura, dammit. I’m going to tell you something. Don’t you dare breathe a word of it. I’ve told a terrible lie!”

  “Sweetheart, I won’t tell a soul.”

  “Listen to me. I just stood here and convinced Boyd Joyner that his wife is not sleeping with Pierce Jimson!”

  “That was a lie?” Aura pounded her pillow into a back rest and sat straight up. “Holy shit!”

  “ ‘Holy shit’? I shudder to think where you get these expressions.”

  “Raleigh Hayes, this is no time for linguistics. Is that true? PIERCE? Pierce the pure? Pierce the Puritan? God of our Fathers Pierce? Yowza!”

  And so the Hayeses talked of their fellow Thermopyleans until sleep closed their lips. At noon they awakened and found that rest had cured Raleigh of his sickness with sex. At one, Raleigh went to the bank, located the young assistant manager who had befriended him, and arranged to open a safety deposit box in the name of Jubal Rogers. In this box he placed $4,500. He wrote a note, enclosed the key, and left both at the Battery Carriage Company. At two, the Hayeses began talking again, and they talked, and walked, hand in hand, Raleigh wearing his new jacket, Aura wearing her new jade bracelet, through Charleston, until the sun grew sleepy, too, and rested its head on the edge of the blue harbor bay. Together Mr. and Mrs. Hayes leaned on the old stone seawall to watch the eventide.

  “So, honey,” said Aura, “that’s it. Betty has Bonnie Ellen well in hand. No one’s heard from Eddie Dellwood. Aunt Vicky calls every other hour. Four of the Kettell girls are siding with Barbara on the divorce, and the fifth, Agnes, of course, has moved in with Nemours and is cooking the spoiled brat his breakfast. So, my news certainly isn’t anywhere near as dramatic as what’s been happening to you, you poor man.”

  Raleigh could see the thrashing silver fish gleam under the waves. “I guess it hasn’t really been completely awful,” he said. “It’s just been consistently awful. And, listen, I don’t call deciding to run for mayor of Thermopylae exactly undramatic, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Now, Raleigh, I didn’t say I’d ‘decided.’ I said I’d been approached. I said I was considering it. Naturally, I need to discuss it seriously with you and the girls.”

  “Naturally…Well, seriously, I’m not really ready to take it seriously. Aura, please don’t take what I’m about to say wrong—”

  “Oh, boy, here we go. If you’re ready to say, ‘Who’s going to take care of the house?’ remember what happened to Nemours Kettell.”

  “The truth is, Aura, you don’t have one iota of political experience.”

  She pulled indignantly away. “That simply isn’t true. I was president of my high school, president of my college student council—”

  “That isn’t the real world.”

  “Secretary of the Young Democrats Convention, Southeast U.S. delegate to the International Nursing Congress, six-term president of the PTA, District Six Democratic party alternate, and Mothers for—”

  “Honey, I don’t need your vita.”

  “I’m a leader, dammit. I can’t help but lead.”

  “Well, that much I know from trying to dance with you.”

  “Oh, Raleigh, you can’t dance worth a fart.”

  “Aura!”

  “And look at Mayor Poinsett anyhow! He’s a joke! He was the fish and game warden! Really, I mean!”

  Hayes brushed back the strand of hair that always fell over his wife’s eyes when she became enthusiastic. “Well, you certainly are a lot prettier than Billy Poinsett.”

  “Oh, you are such a chauvin
ist pig!”

  “How in the world can that remark possibly be construed as antifemale, would you mind telling me?”

  Aura did not have the opportunity to explain, as she was doubtless prepared to do, for the Hayeses were interrupted by someone calling, “Pssht! Pssht! Pssht!” from across the street. Raleigh looked into Battery Park, where he finally spotted a small, elderly, cassocked, and bespectacled Catholic priest standing beneath the palmetto trees in the shadow of an immense Confederate cannon.

  “Raleigh, honey, there’s a little priest over there beckoning to you. I wonder why.”

  “Yes, ah, yes, just a second. Wait right here. No, actually, why don’t you just go back to the inn, see what the Sheffields want to do about dinner, okay? Okay. Thank you.”

  “Oh, Raleigh!” She squeezed his arm. “Is that Weeper Berg?!”

  “Shhh. Yes. He doesn’t want anybody to recognize him. Act like you don’t see him.”

  “Oh, all right. But he sounds fascinating. Wish him good luck.”

  So Raleigh hurried over to the cannon. “What are you up to now, Mr. Berg? Born again?”

  “I should laugh at your jokes? It’s bathetic. My brother Nate is crying in his grave from shame. You spotted me, hah? Well, what can you do? Even with the peepers?”

  “Those glasses must be two inches thick. How can you possibly see?”

  “With you, Hayes, I won’t cavil. I can’t see shit from Shinola. But anywise, where’s Gates? Good news for him. Here’s the deal, I took out the Cuban. The fifteen gees on the dogs, forget it. I called a marker.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Berg, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. But Gates is still in Midway.” Raleigh then explained what had happened at “Wild Oaks” after their departure.

  Oddly enough, Berg seemed less worried than annoyed by this encounter. “Awwgh, I tell yah, the kid spooks. He’s gonna mess me up. So as to this Parisi angle, I’m working on it. But this you should know. It’s acrimonious.” He hiked up the skirt of his black cassock, which was tangled around his feet, and then pointed with his thumb at Aura, now walking past, ostentatiously ignoring them. “Is that, excuse me sticking my nose in, your conjugal?”

  “My wife? Yes, that’s my wife, Aura. A surprise visit. She wanted to meet you but I wasn’t sure—”

  “A beauty, an angel.”

  “Ah, thank you. Mr. Berg…”

  “Call me Simon.”

  “Simon. Gates sent you a message with Mingo. He needs, ah, truck plates and a good body man. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Not to worry.” The priest had pulled his cassock up high enough to take some cigarettes out of his pants pocket. “So listen, Hayes. Mind if I call you Raleigh?”

  “Of course. Not at all. Please do.”

  “A pleasure. Weed?”

  “Pardon? Ah, no, I don’t smoke anymore.”

  “A wise man.” Berg lit his cigarette. “So, listen, we got problems of a serious nature with the lousy Parisi squirt.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. I am cognizant now of certain facts, and we’ve got a problem as to this guy’s wanting satisfaction for damaged goods, and, I’m kidding you not, ‘a stain’ on his crummy honor. This Calhoun guy’s a Bedlamite, which is no news, considering. He’s a lousy Southern meshuggenah on the one side of the tree and a crazy Sicilian Wop screwball in a certain family business, if you catch my drift, on the other. His honor’s got a stain, see?” Berg smacked the black cannon with his small veiny hand. “Spare me these gassy high-nose gloryhounds. So this is honor? They should all climb inside here and get shot over the moon.”

  Hayes adjusted his glasses, but it didn’t help. “I guess I don’t really catch your drift. I realize that this Calhoun is upset about that necklace…”

  “Give me a cursory moment. This Cupid is such a nuthouse schmuck, a permanent resident of cuckooland, as per he thinks he’s the fucking Scarlet Pimpernel, that the family gives him the brush, yah see?, with all regards to serious business. And keeps him on a leash, with, believe me, a large-size chunk of annuity, and hires Big Nose Solinsky as his keeper, which if you are familiar with the expression of the blind leading the likewise, what more can I say?”

  “Let me see. You mean, Calhoun is not, ah, a, ah, serious gangster?”

  “Nah. They send these yo-yos out on two-bit back-burner jobs which a cretinous cripple would take as a crummy insult, and otherwise, they let little Cupid play in his sandbox, which is mostly crawling with patooties, and making like he’s the King of Dixie on a white horse. You follow?”

  Hayes sat down on a bench. “I think so. But is he dangerous?”

  Berg crossed himself. “Was Christ a Jew? This however is not our problem. Calhoun, we could handle. The problem is that irregardless that the guy’s skull is one hundred percent full of air, our pal Cupid is the choice beloved of his grandmother down in Atlanta, G.A., who is, believe me, not an insignificant tomato in the family. Not to mince words with you, Raleigh, your brother’s testicles are in this old broad’s mitts.”

  “I see.” Raleigh, observing Mr. Vanderhost out in the park with his poodle, bent down to tie his shoes. The man nevertheless called politely, “Good evening, Mr. Hayes,” as he strolled past them. Hayes waited before whispering, “So what do we do, Simon? Call the police?…Ah, I’m sorry. I forgot. Excuse me.”

  Berg forgave him with a priestly hand. “A lady of my acquaintance is colloquial with this Parisi broad, and Rose has cut us a deal.” He took off his thick glasses, which had brought tears to his eyes.

  “Well, gosh, that’s very nice of you to go to all this trouble for Gates. Not that he deserves any help after getting himself in this kind of a mess. Keep your back to me, the damn hotel man is staring at us.”

  “So who deserves help?” Berg pulled his spectacles back on, and shuffled sideways. “God forbid we should get what we deserve. Do I deserve these bowels, which I still can’t believe yet the lousy state they’re in.”

  The deal of which Simon Berg’s friend Rose had apparently been the negotiator, and of which Berg was now the articulator, was not, the small priest admitted, a flawless deal. It did have its good points. One was that Gates was required to repay only fifty cents on the dollar for the fake necklace, which meant he only owed Cupid Parisi Calhoun half of what he thought he did. The second was that if the deal were accepted, Mrs. Antony Parisi would call off the hunt, and as there was considerable historical evidence that Big Nose Solinsky had personally sliced off as many ears as the great matador Manolete, this news was bound to be of comfort to anyone unpleasantly involved with him. That concluded the good points. On the contrariety, there were a few drawbacks. They had to go to Atlanta.

  “We?” Raleigh kept saying, to no effect.

  They had to be at the Peachtree Plaza Hotel on Sunday, where Gates was to apologize formally to Mrs. Parisi for making a fool of her favorite grandson.

  Raleigh sighed. “Well, I guess that’s not so bad. I don’t have to be in New Orleans till Thursday. Atlanta’s on the way. At least she doesn’t live in San Francisco. At least she isn’t going to put a horse head in our beds. At least—”

  There was one other drawback. On Monday, at a mutually agreeable site, Cupid Parisi Calhoun, in order to satisfy the stain on his honor (spilled there when his girlfriend publicly called him a sap, a chump, a total flake, and—although this was truly irrelevant to his ignorance of paste jewelry—a premature ejaculator), Mr. Calhoun intended at this site on Monday to fight a duel with Gates Hayes, the choice of weapons to be decided by a cut of the cards.

  Raleigh tried to assimilate this, but his brain rejected the data. “Simon, you simply have got to be making this up for some reason I can’t at the moment figure out. A duel? Nobody’s that crazy.”

  “So look around.” Berg waved his black knobbed hat at all the cannon and stone monuments to glory in Battery Park; some had fresh flowers beside them. “Listen,” he added, as Hayes slumped back on the bench. “I’m sorry.
I’m an old man. I’ve got my limits. It’s a lousy deal, I wouldn’t deny to my own mother, may she rest in peace. But from what could I bargain? And, Raleigh, are you and I gonna say, ‘Truth’s not truth’? Nah. Truth’s truth. Truth is, your brother’s a real fuckup. Chuzpah? Yeah. Talent? We should all have such gifts to crap on. I love the kid. But truth’s truth. Am I right?”

  Raleigh Hayes shook Simon Berg’s hand. “Simon,” he said, “you’re a wise man.”

  “Raleigh, from a man I spoke too soon calling a censorious s.o.b., this is a compliment.”

  The tiny convict advised Hayes that he would keep in touch, and as for Hayes’s concern about his safety now that the police had announced he was armed and dangerous, “Not to worry.” And as for Hayes’s insistence that perhaps it might be risky for Berg to accompany them to Atlanta, “Not to worry.” Indeed, he was, if complaisant with Raleigh, intending to accompany them all the way to New Orleans, from which port he planned to exile himself temporarily to Caracas, where he had a pal yet, God willing, among the living. The alternatives, after all, were prison or shuffleboard, both of which he aspersed. Besides, it was the opinion of Weeper Berg, with no offense intended, that traveling with the Thermopyleans provided a perfect cover. “I ask you, are the cops gonna believe for one lousy minute that a man such as myself—me that was in and out of the Ingersoll estate vaults in Newport in twelve-o-five flat, using no explosives; plus going solo, irregardless that Chinese ivory is no lightweight business for a guy my size, with a crummy back, which has given me serious problems from that day to this—that a man such as Simon Jerome Berg should be consorting with smalltown characters such as yourselves? Never. Believe me, never.” As the old priest scuffled tripping off, he walked right into a woman coming the other way; she must have been a Catholic, for she bowed to him. He held up three fingers and told her, “I give you my benison,” then hurried on.

  Raleigh Hayes sat for a while to think about Right and Wrong. They had never given him any trouble before, but over the past week, they undeniably had begun, in Flonnie Rogers’s phrase, to act up. Raleigh suddenly, and very oddly for so literal a man, started to think of these two abstractions as circus jugglers who were tossing rings back and forth so fast that he couldn’t tell whose were whose. Here he was, trying to stand by Right, and somehow ending up on Wrong’s side over and over again. Here he was, despite his fastidious moral balance: protecting an adulteress, drinking to excess, abandoning his work, throwing away money, getting in fights, lying, stealing, not to mention aiding and abetting the duping of innocent people while sheltering (indeed, worrying about) an escaped convict (and not even a falsely convicted one, but a confessed burglarizer of sheikhs and Newport magnates). And yet on the other hand, Berg was trying to help Gates, and yet Gates was a crook himself, and yet Gates was his blood relation, and yet…and so the circus rings flew spinning by. Finally Hayes just threw up his arms, and knocked them all down together, and said to himself, “Raleigh, slow down. One step at a time.” And with a shrug unconsciously copied from Simon Berg, he added, “So what can you do?”