Dizzy

It doesn’t start in the city. Before Mink comes to the city he has a car and a girl and everything, even if the girl doesn’t respect him too much and runs off with some dancer. The car didn’t start half the time, either, but who’s keeping track? Eddie comes into his life like a thunderclap, like a bad hurt, like a deep debt. Nobody who comes after can match him. An armful of dope or a snootful of powder can’t compare to one solitary smile cracking that big stone face like an egg

He’s always been dizzy over tough guys and Johnny Caspar’s right-hand man is a good angle for him. It’s good for business, even. The big lug shows up at the racetrack in a shiny black car and takes Mink out on the town – all the while Mink’s shaking with dread that this is going to end with a bunch of neat round holes in his brand new vest, something about the juice on last week’s races, but next thing he knows the Dane’s big hand is enveloping his knee under the table and suddenly Mink’s eyes are full of stars.

They get a good thing going between the two of them. Ed’s real serious. Mink’s quick on the draw. The Dane stays at Mink’s place when he needs to take off his hat and stay a while. When somebody clocks Mink pretty good in the head in the course of his appointed duties the Dane is there to scrape him up off the ground.

(It’s not so good for business, in the end.)

*

He’s an out-of-town gambler with a thick wallet and a mathematical grasp of the odds. He’s smart. He has prospects. Mink starts to feel the heat scorching at his heels just thinking about the guy, just thinking about that pocketbook of his and his brain full of figures, full of possibilities, full of angles, and for the two weeks between falling for him and throwing on the brakes he’s thinking about his prospects. All they do is talk. Just business, all about the odds.

The night of the match Mink flings himself on the Dane’s capacious mercies, all the while thinking he knows, he knows, he knows. Like if he loves him up enough nobody’ll get hurt when all those chickens come home to roost. The Dane is smart too,

The guy doesn’t stick around after the fix is in. Ed busts his one good knee out with a crowbar and he’s on the next train to Chicago tout suite. But it’s just business, that time, nothing to do with Mink fluttering around and everything to do with the sorry bastard stepping on Caspar’s racket. Nothing happens, and if nothing happens there’s nothing to know. Easy! Simple. When Ed asks if he ever laid a hand on him, Mink can tell him no.

*

This time it’s nothing about love and nothing about the numbers and everything about dope. They hole up in the dump across the street from the Royale, enough of a dump that it doesn’t have its own name – him and the barman they fired from the Shenandoah Club, a pockmarked Mex a long way from home. He calls Mink by name a lot and needs him more than anybody else does. It’s good for a fella to feel needed. The Mex has a plan and he’ll cut Mink in on it if he promises to keep a secret.

The wallpaper is peeling in scabrous strips and the card table’s short one leg. The kid’s popular, that’s for sure, and when there’s nobody else around to do it Mink helps him fix himself when his hands are shaking. In return he shares his stash until there’s no stash left to ration, just a little white powder in a little paper tangle and the specter of Eddie Dane chasing them out of the temple with a whip – sleepless crack-ups and stray bullets and humorous mix-ups. Until one day he wakes up around 3 in the afternoon and the sweetheart Mex bartender isn’t calling his name any more. All the boys are gone and only the Dane is there, cut out against the lonely window. It’s too quiet; no rooming-house is ever this quiet, not even in the middle of the night.

Figures, something important happens and he sleeps through it. Mink could sleep through a hurricane. But Ed just kisses him and wipes his face with a big white hanky and carries him out while the body’s still cooling in the other room.

*

The next time it’s about sex, and Ed knows. He doesn’t say nothing about it, because what’s to say? It’s just sex. That doesn’t say nothing about fidelity. Not behind closed doors. He never asks if the Dane has other pals, does he?

*

A big blond Swede from old man O’Bannon’s district makes a halfhearted pass at the Dane’s toothy little pal when they’re playing cards, and the Dane sticks his hand to the table with a fruit knife. It’d be kind of funny, funny ha-ha not funny unusual, if not for the fact that this is not at all unusual, for the Dane. Poor handsome stupe – he’d offered Mink a smoke and Mink had offered him a light. Eddie would have made him eat that cigarette case if he hadn’t pulled a pistol on him first. He’d have a pretty good time doing it, too.

Mink knew enough to scram and to make himself scarce before the lead started flying. He’ll never know what a big blond Swede might want out of a weasel-faced fairy with teeth like a cheap piano. Some kind of national rivalry, he’ll never know. Mink is all-American: American nothing. They can still make something happen, can’t they? But the guy makes himself scarce.

Eddie takes him for a ride next Sunday out to a nice little spot in the woods. Mink’s words dry up, and he’s shaking in his wingtips with the trees a wet green canopy dripping rain on his face, down the front of the Dane’s coat. He left his hat in the car. Mink’s not throwing stones about men and their looks but that big close-cropped head looks just like a skull.

“I took care of a little pest problem,” Ed rasps to Mink, jerking him by the bent arm deeper into the woods. He is squeezing on the joint of Mink’s elbow through his shirtsleeve, hard enough that he’s seeing spots, and then the spots are cleared and they’re there in the little green clearing with the birds singing and the sun shining off dewdrops and a stink like a slaughterhouse mop.

And it’s him there laid out on the grass, the Swede, with his cigarette case dumped out on his chest and a bullet in his face – a clean blue mark through his cheek and his hanky-knotted hand hugged close to his side. There’s beetles in his eyes. He’s not so handsome any more, lying in the green leaves with a bloated belly and little black beetles playing in his eyes, all peppered with wet cigarettes.

*

It’s against his better judgment that he falls in with Verna – she was Verna Barlow then and all woman, hard and pearly and nice-smelling and everything, and it would be incorrect to say he wasn’t swayed by that, Mink’s never been known to be a friend to the ladies but watching her dance close with some out-of-town swell with the bare nape of her neck shining and more unexpected curves than a stretch of bad road – it does something. Nobody knows what. Something. He’s never had a weakness for the fairer sex, but she’s a twist with a good head for numbers, which is a rare quality. She knows the score.

When Mink gets out of the washroom with his coat slung over his arm, he barely has time to say, “You can’t go bringing a man in here,” before the cold air from the hallway hits him. His head’s flashing with apprehension, with annoyance – that this is what he gets for squiring around a ripe little number with questionable morals, not that morals have ever been his strong suit. Verna is a nice girl, but she’s loose – she can make do without money, without Mink carrying her pocketbook for her, but left to her own devices she tries to patch things up with love, for cab fare or a bad line of credit at a bar. For nothing. There’s only so much love to go around, you’ve got to shore up the stuff that matters.

Then there’s the thing with O’Bannon; the old potato-eater is practically sending her roses. That’s not to say that the old potato-eater doesn’t know the score. That’s the nature of their agreement – Mink will cart her around and rake together her winnings at the end of the fight but he’ll never cop a feel or try and give her advice on matters of the heart. What does Mink know about heart? Look at the Dane.

Word is, Verna used to be a doper too. She knows all about guys like Mink and what they go in for, what they’ll go out for. But that’s all the more reason why she can’t go dragging strange men in the door of his rat-trap apartment. She’s got a fur coat on over her little silk dress and two mismatched slippers. Her little beaded shoes are still lined up by the door.

The door’s wide open and a draft cuts in like a long plume. Coldest night of the year.

“It’s not like that,” Verna says, “he’s my brother. The two of you ought to get along like a house on fire.”

The man takes off his hat. His face is white and hard from the outdoor cold, and there’s snowflakes sifting from the shoulders of his dark wool coat, melting into his hair. He’s dark like Verna, dark curly hair cropped tight to his head. And of course, like her, he’s a Jew – but a damn good-looking one, and tall, and smiling like a long trim streak of bad news. There’s pink in his cheeks, from the cold, and all his teeth are white and straight and neat as diamonds.

Mink stands up. His cigarette sheds ash down his folded tuxedo jacket. And he smiles.