“I’m what?”
“That’s what you’re doing. My mother and father work in defense plants, and Frank’s do too. And if they take a day off to come down here they’re holding up the assembly line. And that’s sabotage.”
Mr. Bannon could not believe it. These damned kids in their sharp suits, obviously a little drunk, telling him he was a saboteur!
“And what’s more,” Benny went on, “why aren’t you in the Army?”
“You little bastard!” The words shot out of Mr. Bannon’s mouth. “Get out before I clout you one! Now get out!” He approached them with clenched fists. His face twitched convulsively.
Frank backed away, but Benny shifted into the boxing stance. “We don’t want no trouble,” Benny said, “but if you make a pass at me I’m going to slug you.”
The rage and humiliation of weeks blinded Mr. Bannon. Instinctively he knew he was in error, that he should pack his brief case and go home, but he wanted to be a human, to be able to give expression to his resentment, to hurt these boys as they had hurt him. He decided to forget everything: his job, Mr. Hayes, his responsibility, the certain repercussions; he would welcome the publicity, for then he could speak out about what school conditions really were with the overcrowded classrooms full of boys who strained from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon to get away from the building and its educational controls. All this was a waste of time, for the educational authorities were attempting to control a war phenomenon with the static routines that had sufficed during peacetime. And no attempt was being made to cope with the situation. All talk and meetings and civic resolutions deploring youthful vandalism and vagrancy—and that was all.
“That’s what I want.” Mr. Bannon gritted his teeth. “I’m going to make a pass at you and you’re going to try to slug me and then I’m going to beat the hell out of you.”
“Get away from the desk,” Frank warned Benny, “and we’ll both work on him.”
“Now you’re talking,” Benny exulted. “O.K., you Bannon bastard, you asked for it!” Benny rushed Mr. Bannon and attempted to kick him in the ankle, but Mr. Bannon’s right fist caught him flush on the jaw and he reeled backward. Quickly Mr. Bannon swung around toward Frank and hit him a hard roundhouse slap across the mouth. Frank cowered as Mr. Bannon rained blows upon his head and shoulders, and then a short digging jab in the ribs made him groggy with pain.
Benny shook his head. That guy Bannon could really hit, and Frank was in trouble. For a moment he thought of cutting Mr. Bannon, but that was bad, and then he thought of his gun. Quickly he yanked it from his shoulder holster, grasped the barrel, and hit Mr. Bannon across the head with the butt. Mr. Bannon lifted his hands, and Frank hit him squarely in the throat. Spittle bubbled in the corners of Mr. Bannon’s mouth, and he ducked and grabbed for Benny. There was only one thing he wanted to do now, and that was to kill the two of them. He wrestled with Benny for the gun while he tried to shake Frank off his back. Frank had one arm around his throat and was beating him with his right fist. Again he attempted to twist Benny’s arm behind his back, and suddenly the barrel of the gun was pointed directly at his chest. He struggled to push the barrel away and he twisted on Benny’s free arm. Benny screamed with pain and involuntarily pulled the trigger. There was a sharp muffled crack, and Mr. Bannon wavered, looked at them unbelievingly, then staggered forward to the desk, grasped the edge, collapsed, and died.
Benny wiped his flushed face and stared with wonder at the gun. For the first time he realized that the toy which he had made in the shop was a lethal weapon. The room was quiet except for their heavy breathing, and the silence screamed about them, engulfing them in the vortex of sudden death and murder.
Frank gulped and slapped Benny in the face. “What’d you do that for?”
Benny shook his head dumbly and continued to stare at the gun and the body. Blood soaking from the chest wound had discolored Mr. Bannon’s shirt and jacket, and the stain grew larger and bright red.
Frank slapped him again. “You jerk,” he hissed, “you’ve killed him! Coming here was your idea and you’ve killed him!”
Benny put the gun in the holster and gaped like an idiot at Frank. “What’re we gonna do now?” he asked helplessly.
Frank shoved him toward the door and then stopped. Silently he opened the classroom door and looked into the corridor. It was empty. He pushed Benny ahead of him, shut the door, and they tiptoed to the stairs. Luck was still with them. As they passed the first floor they heard the janitor whistling as he swept the classrooms, and with the sweat streaming from their faces and necks they forced themselves to descend slowly and quietly. They walked rapidly to the main entrance of the school, opened the massive wooden door, and in ten steps were on the sidewalk and walking nonchalantly toward Atlantic Avenue. They were certain no one had seen them leave, but what about their entry into the school?
“We can’t take any chances,” Benny said as they doubled back toward Pitkin Avenue. “We’ll have to blow.”
Frank shivered. “You don’t know what you done.”
“Shut up.” Benny poked him. “Shut up!”
“What’re we gonna do now?”
“We’ll have to blow.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” Benny said slowly. “Someplace.”
Panic welled in Frank and fear sucked at his throat. “We haven’t any money. Why’d you do it? I stopped carrying my rod yesterday, and you had to go around carrying yours! I asked you yesterday and this morning to ditch it, but no, you had to be a hard guy! Now look at us!”
Benny stopped and grabbed Frank by the arm. “Listen,” he gritted, “you better cut it out. We’re in this together and we’ll get away.”
“Let’s go down to the club.” Frank felt as if he were going to puke. “Let’s take a bus.”
“We’ve got to walk there,” Benny replied. “If we take a bus someone is liable to see us. We can’t even take a cab. We’ve got to walk. Maybe we better walk apart. I’ll cross the street and you follow me.”
“Maybe we ought to go to the cops and tell them what happened.”
“Listen, rat”—Benny’s face paled—“one more word like that and I’ll plug you too. They can only burn me once, and I’d just as soon knock you off to stay alive as not. Understand? Now you get across the street and I’ll follow you. And you’re walking right to the club.”
“I’m no rat, Benny. But I’m scared.”
“So’m I, sport. But we’ll get out of this someway. Go ahead.”
It was a two-mile walk to their clubroom, and at every step Frank heard the crack of the .22 and saw the stain on Bannon’s chest grow larger and redder. And he hadn’t called Betty, and now she’d think he’d washed her up. His stomach was taut with nausea and pain, and tears obscured his vision. He would have given anything to bring Mr. Bannon back, but he was dead, and they had killed him and they were murderers, not killers who got a couple of grand for dropping a guy and who had everything all fixed for a fast getaway, but just two stinkers who’d been fooling around with homemade rods and making believe they were hard guys.
Now Benny took charge of things. He took a pair of pliers from the toolbox they kept in the clubroom and tore away the wire that held the tube in the stock of his gun. Then he burned the stock and grip of the gun in the furnace and wrapped the firing-pin assembly, the tube, and the wire in a handkerchief, for he intended to dispose of the steel items at different places and at different times.
“We’ll leave here when it gets dark,” Benny said, “and we’ll take Sam’s car and drive it out as far as we can. You know, if we could get into Canada and into the woods the cops’d never get us.”
“Mexico would be better,” Frank suggested.
“And China best.” Benny laughed.
“Look,” Frank said, and then stopped as he chose his words carefully. “We ought to be careful about blowing. I’m pretty sure no one saw us leave the school, and if no one saw us go in, then we’re pretty safe. How would any one know that we—I mean you—knocked him off? And—”
“You were right the first time, Frank. We knocked him off. Understand? We!”
Frank saw Benny’s face become darker and more menacing. Benny was right; they were both in it. “All right,” Frank sighed, “we. But maybe we ought to hang around, act as if nothing had happened. Look at us, we don’t look marked up.”
Benny touched his face gingerly. “My jaw’s a little swollen.”
Frank leaned over and shook his head. “It’s nothing. No one’ll be able to tell by morning. And I look all right, don’t I? Look, I’ll go out and call up Betty and tell her to get Ann. It’s only eight o’clock, and I guess she’s still home. Then you’ll get Sam’s car and we’ll take the girls out and get them home by twelve. Then we’ll go home and tell our folks that we were bad in school and that one of them has to come up with us. We’ll behave as if nothing happened, and who’ll ever be the wiser?”
“You know,” Benny reflected, “I think you got something there. I’ll bet the evening papers are out now, and when you go out to call the babes, then you can find out if it’s in the papers. If they don’t know who done it, you’re right, why should we blow?”
“Good.” Frank stood up. “I’ll be back in about ten minutes. Just hold tight.”
“Get back in a hurry. And, Frank “
“Yes?”
“Don’t try to cross me up.” Benny’s voice was an iron gate that barred his escape.
The
Daily News
had the headline splashed across the first page.
H. S. TEACHER MURDERED IN CLASSROOM
NO CLUES TO KILLER
Frank whistled as he dialed Betty’s number. No clues to the killer. Killer, not killers. No clues. No nothing. They were in the clear. But they’d have to be careful. Killer, not killers. In fact, he hadn’t had anything to do with it. He hadn’t carried a rod, and Mr. Bannon was giving him a beating when Benny stepped in and slugged him with the gun butt. But he was there, and as long as he was there he was implicated. He was an accessory. It was as if he were a lookout while the other guys were sticking up a candy store and one of the guys shot and killed the owner of the store. Even the lookout got the chair. It had been Benny’s idea to return to the school, and because of Benny he might burn. But the paper said killer. One.
He was glad when Betty answered the phone, and he smiled at the mouthpiece of the telephone as if she could see him.
“You know,” he said, and he marveled that he spoke with such calmness, “when your mother and father work it isn’t easy to take care of things. And I’ve got a kid sister, too, that needs watching after. So honest, babe, I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier. You’ll meet me tonight?… Fine! And you can get Ann for Benny?… That’s on the beam. Listen, we’ll pick you up at the same place at about—let me see—say a quarter after nine? Good. Fine. I’ll be seein’ you. So long, honey.”
Frank bought a
News
and read the murder story as he walked back to the club. The paper did not carry many details except that the teacher was bruised, as if he’d been in a fight, and that he had been killed by a .22 caliber bullet which had punctured the heart. There were no clues, and no one had seen anyone suspicious entering or leaving the building. And as he read he whistled more brightly.
He clasped his hands and waved them at Benny as he opened the clubroom door, and then he held a finger to his lips to stop Benny from asking any questions.
“Everything’s fixed.” He winked. “We’ve got a date tonight. Nine-fifteen. We’ll have to hurry, guy, because I’m hungry.”
“You mean it?” Benny whispered as they walked up the steps.
“Perfect,” Frank replied. “I got a paper here which says they don’t know who done it. Aren’t you glad now we didn’t take a powder?”
“And how! Christ, I feel a lot better, though I’m sorry for the poor bastard. But he got what was coming to him. He didn’t have to clout us around.”
“You’re right about that,” Frank agreed. “He said he was gonna beat us up. But you gotta get rid of those parts. How’re you gonna work it?”
“I’m putting the whole thing in plaster of paris, and we’ll drop it off a bridge tonight.”
“A very good idea.” Frank slapped him on the back as they entered a delicatessen. “Let’s get something to eat, and hurry, we haven’t got too much time.”
“You know,” Benny said, “I’m not nervous any more.”
“Me neither.”
“Shake.”
As they sat across the table from each other and bit into their hot pastrami club sandwiches they winked at each other. No clues. No nothing. The perfect setup.
The Goldfarbs sat silently around the kitchen table, and occasionally Alice glanced at Frank. Frank ate stolidly, concentrating on the plate before him and attempting to be impervious to the hostility of his father and mother. They could have been working overtime this Thursday evening if he had not got into trouble. Now he had his picture in the paper and the police had told Mrs. Goldfarb that Frank was remanded to her custody and that he was not to leave New York.
Such a scandal. Not only hadn’t he gone to school on Monday and Tuesday, when God only knew where he was, but Wednesday he had to be responsible for the riot in the classroom.
“Momser,”
his mother said bitterly, “you had to be a regular actor, a comedian. I think you’re wasting your time when you should be in Hollywood making a fortune with your funny tricks.”
“I’ve told you at least a hundred times that I’m sorry,” Frank replied sullenly.
“Look”—she pointed at him with her fork—“he’s sorry! So now maybe everything is supposed to be all right?”
“Let him eat,” his father said. “I think he knows what he’s done.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Frank stood up and then realized he was trembling. He sat down and toyed with the food on his plate. “Why can’t you let me alone? I told you I’m sorry. Can I help it if somebody bumps off the teacher? If that didn’t happen everything would’ve been all right.”
“And what about the day’s pay that I’ve lost anyway because I had to go to school because of your carrying on like an Indian? God knows you come from a good home where we give you everything you want. The least you can do is help. Do we send you to go to work”—his mother raised her hand to stop her husband from speaking—“like other parents? I see boys like you working in the factory and making fifty dollars a week with the overtime. Do we ask you to go to work? No! We want you to have an education so that you won’t have to work like us. So with Benny Semmel you go around bumming!”
“Momma,” Alice said timidly, “Frank didn’t do anything bad. They were just fooling around.”
“And what sort of care does he give his little sister?” His mother raised her eyes toward the ceiling and spoke to her personal deity. “Does he look after her like a good brother? No! Too busy being a regular lady
geher
with a haircut that looks like
kuss mir in tuchess
and pants that fit him like Turkish bloomers.”
“Rashke!” her husband said. “Enough!”
“So”—she turned to her husband—“you don’t like what I’m saying? I’ve got plenty to say to you! A fine father you are! Why couldn’t you have been making a living like other men were before the war so that we shouldn’t have to live in such a
hegdess
with bums and
bummerkess
all around us? If we were living in Crown Heights or East Flatbush we wouldn’t have the trouble we have today!”
“There’s no place to move,” her husband replied, “and lots of good boys and girls live here.” He reached across the corner of the table to stroke Alice’s hair. “Children can be good all over.”
“For every sensible thing he is always ready with his philosophy.” The edge in Mrs. Goldfarb’s tone became more pronounced. “I know there’s no place to move. Every day that I’m not working overtime I’m looking for a place to live. And instead of me coming home to rest my feet and my son here, my
nachess”
—she bowed to Frank with heavy sarcasm—“looking for an apartment, he is busy in the poolroom. Tell me, my darling son, my little gangster, have you already become the best player in the poolroom?”
Frank slammed his knife and fork on the table and rushed into his bedroom. Tears hung in the corners of his eyes, and he flung himself across the bed. The old lady was too damned much for him.
“Don’t think you can get away from me, you momser.” His mother opened the bedroom door and leaned across the foot of the bed. “I should slap your face so hard that you’d realize what you’ve done!”
“Please, Rashke”—his father stepped in as appeaser—“let him finish his supper.”
“So who’s stopping him? Get up,” she said to Frank, “and finish your supper.”
“I’m not hungry.” His voice was muffled by the pillow.
Alice approached the bed and touched his arm. “Come eat, Frank.”
“I’m not hungry.” Tears made his voice quiver.
“Get up,” his father said, “and come to the table. Rashke”—he turned to his wife—“you’ve said enough. Frank was foolish but not bad. So you’re not to say any more.”
Mrs. Goldfarb hesitated and then went back to the kitchen. “Tell him to come right back,” she called, “before everything on his plate gets cold.”
“Come, Frank”—his father shook him—“get up.” Frank washed his face and returned to the table. That was another thing he hated about the apartment, the bathroom being off the kitchen. As he sat at the table he wished he didn’t have to eat. They thought he wasn’t hungry because of their bawling out, but he wondered if they knew what it was like to have participated in the killing of a man and then to have gone out the same night with a date who expected him to neck her and say the things she wanted to hear. After he had taken her home and awakened his father and mother to tell them that one of them would have to go to school with him the next morning they were too sleepy to yell at him, and so he had got into bed with no more than a half dozen curses from his mother, who said she hoped he wouldn’t live to wake up in the morning, but he couldn’t sleep. The perimeter of the stain on Mr. Bannon’s chest grew larger until it covered everything. And the next morning he had to hold himself as in a vise when he arrived at the school and saw the crowd and the police and was taken into the principal’s office for questioning. If the detectives would’ve been tough and yelled at him like they did in the movies he wouldn’t have been worried. But they were soft and easygoing. They asked the damnedest things, like they knew that he and Benny Semmel had been the leaders in the uproar, but they had checked and found that Benny and he had fairly good records at school, although their attendance had not been as good this term as it had in the past. Then the detectives asked them if they knew anyone who hated Mr. Bannon or ever had spoken about getting even with him. Then they asked him what he was studying and how many there were in his family and where he lived and where his mother and father worked and what he did with his time. While talking to them he felt as if he were wound up like a crossbow, for at any moment he expected them to start shooting questions at him, but they didn’t. Then they told him that he wasn’t to go on the hook any more and they expected him to be in school every day and he wasn’t to leave New York without their permission.
After he left the principal’s office Frank had to lean against the wall while he pulled himself together, and it seemed as if his mother’s scolding and cursing came from a distance. Although he knew that she stood right next to him, her voice seemed to come through a fog and it did not bother him. The cops suspected nothing and would never find out who had knocked off Mr. Bannon. Not from him they wouldn’t. But what about Benny? Benny was still waiting to be questioned, and he didn’t know what Benny might do. If Benny were only smarter and not such a loudmouth. Look at the way he had started to tell the girls about the Dukes. And why hadn’t the cops asked him about where he had been and where he had gone after the class had been dismissed by Mr. Hayes? He didn’t know what to do about an alibi. Or maybe the best alibi was that they had gone from school to their clubroom to Davidson’s and back to their club until they had called the girls, eaten in the delicatessen, and taken them out in Sam’s car.
That was the first bad break: Benny didn’t have a license. So what? Frank figured. Lots of guys drove without licenses, and the most that could happen would be another bawling out and then Sam would be fined. So it wasn’t so bad, and they would be just a couple of irresponsible kids who had gone on the hook and driven a car without a license. The only thing was Benny. If he became rattled they were goners, but the murder rap would make Benny careful. Look at the way he had encased the metal parts of the gun in the plaster of paris and had dropped it off the bridge between Brooklyn and Jacob Riis Park in Rockaway. There wasn’t an auto on the bridge when Frank had driven the car close to the rail, and Benny had heaved the package over so smoothly that the girls had seen nothing.
They had an alibi, and now they were going to go to school, and he was going to start hanging around the Center a little. He was going to stop drinking and smoking reefers, and Benny was going to do the same. They would never be caught, but the fear did not leave him, and that was why he could not eat.
“You know”—he kept his eyes on the plate as he spoke—“I’m sorry I caused you all this trouble, Mom. You too, Pop. Honest, it won’t happen again.”
“How can I believe you?” his mother wailed. “You stay out late and don’t go to school and you’re going to get into more trouble and disgrace us!”
“Rashke”—his father was exasperated—“please be good enough to stop. You’re making things worse than they are.”
“Still, Meyer,” she said to her husband, “no one is asking you.”
“That’s why I’m telling you. You don’t know when to stop.”
“Let’s all go to the movies after supper,” Alice suggested.
Frank smiled and winked at her. “Sure,” he said, “let’s. We’ll all feel better.”
“I’m tired,” his mother said. “You can go to the movies, but I’ve got to work tomorrow. I lost enough today,” she reminded Frank. “Enough.”
Frank approached his mother and forced himself to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m sorry, Mom, believe me.”
She would never know how sorry, he thought.
Black Benny stood in front of the candy store on Amboy Street and wondered if he looked the same. Some of the boys had once said that as soon as you killed your first guy your appearance changed. He looked in the mirror of the gum-vending machine and didn’t see any change, except that maybe his eyes were frightened. If only he were certain of Frank, for something about Frank made him uneasy. What it was he couldn’t put his finger on, but maybe it was the moony, squeamish way of his, like when he didn’t want to line up on a babe or the way he felt about this new babe Betty. The trouble with Frank was that he was always dreaming and out of the world. Like when he had tanked Crazy for kidding around with his kid sister. It was Frank who had insisted that they go to school yesterday. If they would’ve stayed out of school it was certain they wouldn’t have knocked off Bannon.
They did it. No matter how Frank figured it, they did it. If Frank would’ve been able to give Mr. Bannon a battle, then Benny wouldn’t have had to slug him with the gun butt and Bannon would be alive today. Bannon looked crazy when he was twisting his arm, as if he were trying to tear it right out of his shoulder. So what could he do? Bannon might have shot him, and he didn’t mean to pull the trigger, only Bannon was ripping out his arm and the pain had been running in hot white flashes up through his arm until he just had to break loose from the son of a bitch. So now he was dead and the gun was destroyed and there weren’t any clues, and still he didn’t feel safe. If Mitch or Bull or Larry or Moishe or any of the other guys in the Dukes, except Crazy, had been in on it, he would’ve felt safe, but Frank was an unknown quantity, like the
x
in algebra. Sometimes it meant a lot and sometimes it was nothing; there was no way of solving the equation. Real hard guys, when they worried about a guy squealing or ratting, knocked off the guy who might get them in trouble, but he was never going to do that again. Why the hell hadn’t he listened to Frank Tuesday night and got rid of his gun? Frank had wiped his fingerprints off his gun and dropped it down a sewer on their way to school Wednesday morning. But he had to be a hard guy, and now there was a feeling of pain in his chest whenever he thought of the look on Bannon’s face before he died. It was driving him nuts.
The guys were leaving him alone because they knew he was feeling lousy, but now he wanted someone to talk to, and he went into the candy store and sat at a table with Larry Tunafish, Mitch, and Crazy.
“Where’s Frank?” Larry asked him.
“I’ve been waiting for him,” Benny replied.
“I guess he’ll be around,” Mitch said.
“He’s a rat,” Crazy said.
Benny’s heart started to pound. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s just a rat. A regular rat.”
“Shut your hole.” Larry slapped Crazy across the back of the head. “You’re always talking.”
Benny tried to ask casually, “Is Frank a rat?” He wondered if the guys could hear his heart pounding.
“Are you becoming like Crazy too?” Larry laughed. “Don’t listen to the jerk. Listen, Crazy”—he squirmed sideways in the booth—“I don’t like to hear that kind of talk about one of our guys. Frank and Benny are in a jam and—”
“I’m in no jam!” Benny moved suddenly and tipped over his water glass. “You jerk,” he said to Crazy, “now look what you made me do!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you!”
“Cut it out, guys,” Mitch said. “Hey, Selma,” he called to the girl behind the counter, “wipe up this table, will you?”
“In a minute,” she called back.
“Everyone picks on me,” Crazy went on. “All I’ve got to do is say something and everyone picks on me. Next time you guys want some steaks you know what you can do.”
“No one’s picking on you,” Larry said to him. “But you can’t go around talking like that about our guys. You don’t like Frank; that’s all right with me, but don’t go shouting your mouth off about him being a rat. He’s got some good friends in the Dukes, ain’t he, Benny?”
“You’re damned right.” Benny wished he were sure of it. “Frank is an all-right guy.”
“I’m not saying anything any more.” Crazy pursed his lips together. “See? I’m a dummy.”
“You sure are,” Mitch said kindly. “But we all like you.”
“You know”—Larry sucked on his coke—“I wonder who did knock off your teacher, Benny.”
“How the hell should I know!”
“Say,” Larry said quickly, “what the hell is the matter with you?”
Benny drummed nervously with his fingers on the table. “Nothing.”