17They saw each other once more that day, when Jordan was packing in his room and Sandy dropped in. He stood around and watched Jordan pack and was satisfied how he did it.
“You’re taking three guns?”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t know you always took three guns.”
“I take one when everything’s certain. I take two when there’s a choice but it isn’t all clear. The third one is nothing. It’s just a twenty-two automatic.”
“So why….”
“Cats have nine lives. I have three guns.”
Sandy grunted something but did not say any more. He wants three guns? Let him have them. Or nine lives, if he felt that was an advantage. “I got your four gees for the Penderburg job,” he said. “You want it now?”
“Drop it in the suitcase.”
Sandy dropped it in the suitcase and watched Jordan take things out of drawers. “Where do you keep your dough, in a bank?”
“No. I got a place.”
“Oh. Smart.”
“Oh yes.”
Then Sandy sat on the bed a while longer and watched how Jordan packed his suitcase so neatly.
“You’re taking the plane, aren’t you?”
“Eight-ten, National, flight two-seven-one.”
“I know that one. I never liked it because it gets you there in the middle of the night.”
“I like that.”
“Yes. I see where it makes sense. You starting in on this right tonight?”
“Yes.”
“So maybe I’ll hear from you tomorrow.”
“That’s right. Wednesday.”
Sandy felt relief hearing all the concrete parts of the planning and seeing the right, sensible way in which Jordan packed. He felt there was no more for him to do, which was true enough, and he left. Jordan closed the door after him and went back to his suitcase.
He took garters out and snapped them around his calves. He took the twenty-two back out of the suitcase and hooked it under one of the garters where the elastic had a gimmick sewed on for the purpose. In the beginning, some time back, Jordan had worn the small gun this way, because he had felt like a beginner. It had served no other purpose and in a while he had stopped. Quite a while back.
He took the roll of hundreds and fifties and opened the bills up. Then he climbed on a chair and took the end cap off a curtain rod and pulled out a very tight roll of bills which he had kept there. He combined all the bills and tucked them into a place inside his suitcase.
When he left his room there were some shirts left in one drawer, new shirts and not his size. There were also unused razors in a sealed cellophane wrapper and a full can of shaving lather. He himself always used cream.
At nine that evening Jordan left the plane at the Washington airport. Washington, D.C., was even hotter than New York and it was not raining there either.
Benny liked the job and he even came to work early. He walked into Monico’s ten after four when he knew that rehearsals were over, and the first thing he did was to go to his cubicle where he changed into the black pants, dress shirt, and cummerbund. He liked what the cummerbund did to his shape and for that reason always left the tux jacket off. He left it on the hook until later and walked out into the corridor.
It went one way to the stage and the other way to an exit door with a red light. That was required by law. The door led to a walled yard and the wall had an alley on the other side. Like the weekly ice, this door was for protection, though the weekly ice went regularly and was enough. Nobody used that door. Benny passed numbers five, six and seven. The next door went to the dressing room. It was open and all the girls were inside. They sat at their tables with the lit-up mirrors and some were farther back where the shower room was. When Benny stopped at the door he smelled the creams and the lotions.
Like a court eunuch, Benny had a number of privileges. He had the run of the corridor and the rooms all along there, and after rehearsals he liked to walk into the dressing room.
He took a cigar out of his shirt pocket, walked through the door, and watched himself coming in on one of the mirrors. “Hi, girls, hi, girls,” he said.
They answered or didn’t answer, depending on where he was looking.
“You’re getting fat,” he said to one of them.
And she said, “You keep looking at it while I’m sitting down, so naturally.”
Lois came in from the shower room and had a big towel over her shoulder.
She wore that and the shorts and had washed her hair. Her head was down and her hair hanging over her face. “What a whoozy masculine odor,” she said. “I bet Benny has brought his cigar.”
Some laughed and Benny laughed and he had in mind to say something clever. Lois said, “Hold the dryer for me, Benny?” and sat down at her table.
He pulled up a chair, close to hers, and plugged in the dryer. “Cut it shorter,” he said. “It’ll dry faster and show more.” He looked at her bent head and her hands fluffing her hair. When she made the right movement he could see her bare front.
“She can’t,” someone said two tables down. “It’s got to, after all, be longer than Evelyn’s.”
She pronounced it Evelyn, with a long e, and they all laughed about the dancing instructor.
“What a name for a guy,” said Benny. “I can’t get over it.”
“It’s British. Over there they got this same name for the men and women.”
“A lisp don’t make him British.”
“But his father’s a lord.”
“Eve-lyn’s no lord, he’s a lady,” and they laughed again.
Benny watched Lois fluttering her hair and he watched her elbows. He had an idea elbows showed true age when nothing else might in a woman, especially with the ones here. He bent down a little, trying to see the girl’s forehead. That was another revealing part. Forehead, and sometimes the eyes.
“Benny?”
He straightened up and said, “Yes.”
“I feel a draft,” said Lois.
“Naturally. I got this dryer trained straight at you.”
She threw her hair back and kept her face turned to the ceiling. Benny turned off the dryer and the room was quiet.
“On my legs, Benny. I mean a draft on my legs.”
“Maybe it’s the hall door being open.”
Lois picked up a brush and went through her hair. She dragged it and whipped it through and Benny watched.
She had put the towel down on the table. “You want me to blush, Benny?”
“Blush? I’m just looking.”
“I don’t like eyeballs touching me, Benny. Be a sweet and close that door?”
“Sure,” he said, and got up. He went to the door and looked out in the hall. He saw no doors open there and felt no draft. “I don’t feel nothing,” he said.
“I don’t feel it any more either,” said Lois, but when Benny came back, she thought of something else. “Get me my robe, be a dear, on the bathroom door?”
He looked behind the door and told her it wasn’t there.
“I left it in back last night,” she said. “I think I left it in number three.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
He walked down the corridor which had dim little sconces along the two walls. They made a gray, spotty light in the passage, meant as thoughtful-ness for the customers. Benny had to go almost as far as the exit door because three was in the rear.
Inside he switched on a light because the curtains were always drawn, and then he switched on the light in the small bathroom where he found Lois’s blue robe. Like a telephone booth, he thought, and looked at the tiled cubicle. When he switched off the light there he heard the door in the hallway open.
“You want to catch a cold?” he said and watched Lois come in.
“My compact,” she said. “Did you see it in there?”
She had the towel around her shoulders again but took it off when she came toward him. She turned and held her arms back and Benny helped her on with the robe.
“It’s in this pocket,” she said. “Never mind.”
“Oh good,” he said. “Then I don’t have to leave right off.”
“Never mind, Benny.”
But he stayed where he was and left his hands on her. He slipped them around her, to the front.
“Benny, please,” she said and tied the cord at her waist.
“Huh?” he said next to her ear. “What do you say, Losy, huh?”
“Benny, let go. I feel like something in a window, in a store window, I mean.”
“You don’t feel like it to me.”
“For heaven’s sake, let go, Benny. You’re like a baby.”
“Listen, if you think I’m like….”
“No.”
“How about it, Lois?”
“I can’t. You know he’s coming any minute.”
“That’s all I need. A minute.”
“Ask Sue. You know he’s coming any minute.”
“To hell with Sue and to hell with him. You know what I think of him.”
He let go of her and she fixed her robe. “What did he ever do to you?”
“Nothing. And he never will. There’s just some I like and some I don’t like is all. How about it, Lois?” and he stepped up again.
“Please, Benny. Not now.”
“Later?”
“All right. Later.”
“Before showtime.”
“All right. Then.”
They were done with the topic and thought of other things.
“You going to use number three?” Benny asked.
“Might as well. Turn the radio on, will you, Benny? I’m going back for a minute to get my mules.”
She left number three and Benny stayed in it. The next thing Lois ran into Sandy, he coming one way in the hall and she going the other.
“Hi, sweets,” she said. “Go on back. I’ll be just a moment.”
“Number three?”
“Sure. Three,” which was the part Jordan heard.
Sure, three, he thought, and I don’t see a one of them. One across the way in the room where everything happens, one down the hall, and one just a ways beyond that one. Jinx job. Here he comes. What a shadowless corridor with those nasty, dim lights. Here he…. Now. Poor, shadowless Sandy and wouldn’t he jump with fright if I reached out now and touched him…. Touched him? Nobody touches that one. Poor Sandy. The cigar though, I could drill that cigar straight out of his face or straight into his face and he’d know that, of course, he’d know that and would worry about it. Jeesis Christ, what happened to my cigar, that kind of thing…. Turn. Nice, big back going into that door. Number three, where I got it, number three, where the…. Now? But the girl might still be down the hall and the noise she’d make would be too much to bear. They scream so with that ten-mouse scream piercing straight out of their gullet….. Good. That’s a good light in that number three workroom over there. Christ. They got the radio going. Jinx job. Easy, Jordan. You’re the provider, Jordan, and how else keep Smith alive? What else but this, Jordan, what else did he teach you and what else is there now but to do the best thing you know how, Jordan, to keep Smith alive? Can’t have Jordan walking around trailing a corpse behind him, some dead Smith corpse hanging down and getting tangled with what Jordan might call a clean job of providing…. Goddamn that radio mumbling. Door closed. Now. Corridor empty. Now.
Now!
Ohmygod how—what is it? How whatever it is hurts. But it’s going to be clean. Very clean when it’s over. Smith there, Jordan here, dead jinx, clean all over…. Now, provider….As soon as he pushed the door open to number three, Jordan, clean, was the professional. He didn’t even hate anybody or want anybody. He was fast and barely visible and never lost his head once though he saw the jinx job setup with the first glance through the door. Two of them and the radio going and a drip faucet sound from farther back.
But he did not have to touch a thing, just look, do it, be done, end of jinx job. There was Benny’s big back, there was Sandy by the opposite wall, there he was pouring liquor into the glass on the table and the radio behind, that mumbling mood music over everything.
Sandy straightened up, looked up, and smiled. He’s never smiled at me this way, and the last thing he’ll do is smile at me just that way. Now. And he fired.
He felt clear and good as soon as he had done it and before Benny could turn Jordan was no longer there. Jordan had had his glimpse, which was all the touching he needed, the smile looking at him, the smile gone absolutely, then Sandy leaning, and the mess on the wall behind Sandy’s head.
Clean job, good provider, dead jinx, Smith breathing a sigh. Jordan closed the exit door without slamming it and ran.
18He ran because he was in a rational hurry. There was this much time and this much to do and to make all of it fit it meant fast now. No haste, but fast. Fast was clean and haste was messy and now, of course, everything was finally clean. And this for the final touch, a present for Smith.
Jordan stopped walking when the Forty-second Street library was exactly opposite. He stopped to give himself time to calm down.
Not a present for Smith, but like a present for Betty. It would be: I give you this absolute Smith, this absolutely real Smith, Betty; look at me in black and white, Betty, so absolutely clear cut and right; hell, we could even get married. Jordan laughed and walked into the library.
He sat down in the newspaper room and held a paper. At seven, as always happened, Caughlin walked in. Jordan let the old man sit down and then waited another few minutes.
Caughlin, like his habits, was always the same. He had a brown overcoat on, long and large, which had one button high up in front. The button was closed so that the shirt would not show. The shirt was an undershirt. Caughlin took his glasses out, brushed white hairs back over his skull, started reading. He never looked right or left when he read, which made him seem stiff-necked or stolid.
“Evening, Caughlin,” said Jordan.
Caughlin waited till the other was sitting. Then he looked sideways and back at his paper again.
“Good evening, Jordan,” he said. “Why me?” and his Adam’s apple starting bobbing. There was no sound when Caughlin laughed, just the Adam’s apple bobbing. “Am I a job or do you want one?”
“I need one.”
“Murder in the Reading Room,” said Caughlin, and seemed to be laughing again. “Corny, isn’t it?”
“Stop the crap, Caughlin.”
“And start the music.”
Jordan said nothing because everybody knew the old man was crazy, though this was to say nothing about his work. His work was expensive and could not be touched.
“I need everything from the bottom up,” said Jordan, “and I need some of it right away.”
“What name?”
“Smith.”
This time Caughlin laughed with a sound. A man at the next seat looked up from his paper but Caughlin, who rarely turned his head, kept on laughing and paid no attention. When he was done he looked down at his paper and talked again.
“I’d be ashamed to sell you something with the name of Smith, Jordan.”
“But it is Smith. I’m saying, it has to be Smith. Birth certificate, car registration, insurance, driver’s license, social security. Samuel Smith.”
“Too many esses.”
“What?”
“Sounds like a superior job.”
“It is.”
“And who’s paying for it?”
“I am.”
“I thought you said it was a job, Jordan.”
“Damn you, stop digging,” he said. He was glad that the old man did not look up and would not see the mistake show in Jordan’s face. “I get reimbursed for it,” said Jordan, “which is the new way we got of handling things.”
“Ah. There’ve been changes.”
“You seem the same.”
“Permanent, superior quality. When do you need this?”
“Jinx time.”
“What was that, Jordan?”
“Jig time, jig time. I mean now.”
“I can’t get it for you all in one day. What do you need first?”
“The birth certificate.”
“Ask the impossible, and it costs extra.”
“Caughlin, come on. This is rush.”
“Easiest way, Jordan,” and Caughlin never changed his face, “is for you to go out and do a job on a Smith and then bring me the papers so I can fix them up.”
“You going to keep horsing around here with that nut talk, Caughlin, or do I get this job done?”
“Murder in the Reading Room.”
It’s part of the price. You buy from Caughlin and part of the price is the digging and squirming he does like a worm and you better take it.
“What do you need the things for, Jordan?”
“I’d only lie to you.”
“All my customers do. But they all say something.”
Jordan said nothing.
“Need it that bad?”
He needed it so badly, Jordan felt suddenly on the point of tears or a scream, he did not know which, both Smith and Jordan screaming why all this….
Because a wife can’t testify against her husband, it struck him. That’s why. I’m Smith and I marry her, for that good reason. The scream went and Jordan felt right again, admiring the quick lie he had made. He knew full well he was lying, the same as he knew there was no Smith and no Jordan, but it worked well that way.
“Smith is an easy name,” he said. “You’ve got to have something on file that I can use.”
“I do,” said Caughlin. “Needs a little work, but is a good birth certificate.”
“You son of a bitch, why didn’t you say so in the beginning?”
“I like to talk,” said Caughlin.
“I want it tonight,” said Jordan. “Get on it now so I can have it tonight.”
“Too expensive.”
“Come on!”
“Four thousand, counting your hurry.”
The price for Kemp.
“And the driver’s license,” said Caughlin, “that’s for nothing.”
The price for Sandy. I mean, speaking of money, thought Jordan. He said, “I got five hundred with me. You get the rest when you’re done.”
They went outside and stood on the street. It was still light but the street lights went on. Caughlin said something poetic about that and then he said he wanted the five hundred.
“At your place. I want to see the merchandise.”
“I got to fix it a little.”
“I know. I want to see what you’re going to fix.”
They walked through a small park where the bums sat in the warm evening air and from there down a street with tall office buildings which were all shut for the day. The street was quiet and empty because of the hour.
“This one,” said Caughlin, and they went into an alley between two buildings and from there through a steel door into the furnace room. There was a dry heat in the basement room and just one bulb burning near the panel which had to do with the heating and the air-conditioning system.
Caughlin lived behind that room. He lived in an enclosure with a good door, but the room behind turned out to be no room at all. It was like a bin. There was no window, but there was one diagonal wall with a hatch on top where the coal used to come through when they had heated with coal.
The floor was covered with newspaper and the walls were glued over with newspaper.
“I’m in the news,” said Caughlin. He said this to everyone who came in there and it sounded automatic. Some of the papers on the floor lifted gently at the edges when Caughlin closed the door.
There was a cot, a table, a closet—nothing else would fit into the place. In the closet were a great number of things, dirty laundry at first sight. Caughlin rummaged around in the darkness and came up with a sheet of paper.
“This one,” he said.
It looked all right. It made Jordan forty-five years old but aside from that it was a good document.
“Make me younger,” said Jordan, “and for the first name, make it Samuel.”
“That’s your name.”
“Yes.”
“All amateurs do that. Like they’re afraid to let go altogether.”
Jordan laughed. He could let go Jordan and fall into Smith and he could let go Smith and fall back into Jordan. It was that kind of forever situation and he felt there was nothing neater.
“When?” he said.
“I can change the name easier than the age….”
“Naturally,” said Jordan.
“Age,” Caughlin finished off but did not seem to feel interrupted. “But to do both of them….”
“Just the name. Leave the age. When?”
“Tomorrow. Early.”
“Tonight.”
“I’ll work all night.”
“Do it faster.”
Caughlin shrugged and took the five one-hundred-dollar bills Jordan held out. “Between twelve and one tonight,” he said. “Come back here.”
Jordan nodded and went to the door.
“I admire the calmness of a worker like you,” Caughlin said behind him.
Jordan stopped, and turning to look at the old man, he tore some of the sheets on the floor.
“In the face of loss and disaster,” said Caughlin.
“Like what, Caughlin?”
Caughlin sat down on his cot and made the springs squeak a few times, to fill the silence. Then he said, “I see where Sandy is dead.”
He did not creak the springs again and the only sound was Jordan lifting his feet carefully, so as not to tear paper again. Then he leaned against the door. “You know that?” said Jordan.
“Don’t you?”
“How come you know that?”
“You think all I do is read the papers?”
“No,” said Jordan. “I know you don’t.”
It would, of course, not be in the papers because what went on in the back of Monico’s rarely ever got beyond a known circle. But a shadow man like Caughlin, of course he might know.
“I know you knew Sandy,” said Caughlin, “but did you know Benny?”
“No.”
“The one who did it. The one who does bouncing at Monico’s.”
“Who did it?”
“Benny. The one who does bouncing at Monico’s.”
“Well, well, well,” said Jordan, or his voice said it while he listened to it. “Why?”
“For the hoor what fingered him. I don’t know her name.”
Jordan did not say Lois or anything for a moment. Then he said, “That’s no reason.”
“Of course not,” and Caughlin laughed. Then he said, “You sound like the one who did it,” and laughed some more. “Like what Benny said.”
“Like what Benny said?”
“He said, ‘That’s no reason. Even a guy I don’t like I wouldn’t do in for a hooker.’”
“He said that, did he?”
“But they got him.”
“They?”
“Who else, the cops?” Caughlin laughed again.
The way this is handled, Jordan knew, was by the private justice department. He knew about that part. He put his hand on the knob of the door, wanting to leave. “They done with him?” he said.
“I thought you might know about that,” said Caughlin. “Considering your line of work.”
“Stop digging,” said Jordan. “Would I need to be Smith for a routine like that?”
“When they’re done with him, will you let me know?”
“I don’t even know where they’re keeping him.”
“Shor’s Landing,” said Caughlin. “Will you let me know?”
“Why?”
“I’m morbid,” said Caughlin. “Why else know anything?”
“I’ll be back midnight,” said Jordan. “You be here and be done with the job.”
He left that way, saying no more than he always did, Jordan all harnessed and held neat with his habits, avoiding the busy streets because that made sense, but done thinking about problems because they had all been settled. Even Caughlin the talker didn’t worry him. While I’m in town he’ll be busy; when I’m in Miami, let him talk. Oh the sense of it, Jordan thought, and even with Meyer with a nose like a pointed question, oh the ease of the answers, if he should ever ask. I thought you were in Miami? I needed the stuff from Caughlin. I thought you had a job on this what’s-her-name? Her name is Mrs. Smith and a wife cannot testify against her husband. And besides, she won’t. She won’t. No, she won’t. How come, Jordan? Because Smith takes care of that.
He walked, neat, clean, and all settled, and had time for the other thing.
He thought, what a beautiful, warm evening with nothing to do. With Jordan having time in between and Smith, getting shaped up to perfection. Jinx dead, he began, hours late, but completely, to appreciate the right thing he had done.
The first job ever that had not been a job, and the beauty of it, he kept thinking. Done like a job, that Sandy thing, but with a first-time feeling of ripe satisfaction. Well, of course, it had been necessary, but it was beautiful too. Sandy, had he lived to know it, would agree and would say, Sammy, I’ll pay you double. Not that he didn’t pay, of course, for Sandy always meant money. Dear Sandy, yes how well he paid, always and from start to finish.
Nine o’clock and more time to go.
And, for instance, Lois now, I even wouldn’t mind her. A true time-in-between girl if I’d only known it sooner.
But while Jordan felt free now, he did not feel foolish. He did not go to the Monico or even waste time on the notion. Maybe next time I’m back in town and between Jordan and Smith time. This is between Jordan and Smith time, but that does not mean I should be foolish.
Ten o’clock and more time to go and Jordan, very sensible, agreed with his thoughts that he might spend the time out of town.
He stole a car and drove to the Jersey side. He took his first ride through a warn night and with no need to go anywhere. He even whistled.
Eleven o’clock and below the dip was Shor’s Landing. This shows, he said, how perfect everything can be, because it is.
Shor’s Landing was a line of docks on a little lake, a line of lights hanging between tall posts, and a restaurant—more lights—where woods started again, and cabins—few lights—where woods came from the other side.
The pine needles breathed out a nighttime smell and the band at Shor’s Landing made nighttime music. Everybody dancing, thought Jordan. It’s not bedtime, just nighttime.
These must be lovers, thought Jordan. This cabin is dark like the others but with two sleepless voices.
This one? Empty. Shor is not renting too well.
And in this one a fisherman, with ear plug and nembutal to make certain he’ll be up fresh at five in the morning. And he has a belly, as I can tell by the snore.
Ah yes. This one by the door with a cigarette. Glow and fade, glow and fade, nervous in the night and wishing he were somewhere else. Who wants to sit by the door of a cabin with the music someplace else and the bed taken up and the holster making a heavy patch of black sweat…. What did Sandy used to pay for that type of job, ten fins?
Jordan walked up to the cabin and asked the man for a light. Before getting the light he kicked the man under the chin, because the man sat low on the stoop and the method was soundless.
The screen door creaked and Jordan thought, I bet Benny thinks this is it.
He was on the bed, as expected, tied up, as expected, gagged and sweated. Jordan knew this ahead of time because the method was standard.