Studs Lonigan (106 page)

“A cop, you know, has to make certain about things, that's all.”

“I know how it is,” Studs said, thinking that Officer McGoorty had dumbness written pretty plainly all over his map.

“That's it. We don't take chances, because it's our business not to.”

“Yes,” Studs said.

“Well, so long, Lonigan. I'll be seeing you around. I got to amble along to the box at the corner.”

Studs watched him move toward the corner. He turned eastward, thinking that it was pretty dumb, having nothing to do. What was Catherine doing, and was she, at this very moment, thinking of him? Had to keep his mind off her, though, or he'd go cuckoo. Couldn't have another night like last night. But had she, or would she telephone him? He could see her, begging forgiveness at their next meeting, while he was aloof, just to teach her a lesson. But he probably wouldn't act that way, because he wanted the scrap patched up.

Radios all over. And he hated that damn song. But women, now, they never did seem to know their own minds, or what they wanted, so how could a guy know it? Even so, and even if he was in the right, still, he needn't have been so goddamn mean to her. Yes, he was kind of sorry about it.

He haphazardly stared in a fish-store window at the unshaven man in a dirty apron behind the counter. He laughed, thinking that the fellow was a dead ringer for Abie Kabibble. He moved along, and stopped at the window of a book store and rental library, looking from a stack of greeting cards to books piled up and spread around the window, with their bright jackets, reading the titles,
Lumber, Jews Without Money, The Women of Andros, The Crystal Icicle, Iron Man, The Mystery of Madame Q, Bottom Dogs, Arctic Quest.
Sometime he might rent one or two of the books they had and do a little reading, he reflected, turning away from the window. Nice, it was, walking along here at this time of day, sunny, people coming and going, young married women, some pushing baby buggies, neat, swell-looking girls with their figures developed just right, not at all bad on the eyes. Two of them ahead, dressed smartly in black suits. Funny, too, that girls like that would be walking along on the street so calm and haughty, and even high-hat. And yet they would, with their husbands or whoever was the right fellow for them, lose all their cold haughtiness. If it was the right time, and the right fellow was feeling and necking them, they would pant, burn up, their faces would change and they would become so passionate that they'd almost suffer until the guy fixed them up. Just like Catherine in the hallway when she'd run upstairs to prevent herself from going the limit. And wouldn't he like to be the guy to fix up one of these younger married girls around here? One like Weary Reilley's sister Fran. Suppose he should meet her now, and that should happen. Just looking at her was enough to show how much passion she had in her. And now that she was married. To see her and get fixed up regular on mornings like this while her husband was down on La Salle Street. That's what would make life a little interesting.

He paused at South Shore Drive and looked across at the arched entrance-way to the club grounds, wondering again what should he do now. Carroll Dowson had just joined South Shore Country Club, he remembered, and was getting up in the world. Well, the day would come when Studs Lonigan could join a swell club like that if he wanted to. A train pulled out of the station, curved around onto Seventy-first Street, clattered along toward Jeffery. He watched a passing succession of automobiles. He leaned against a mailbox and looked at the faces of people on the sidewalk, the women, the babies, a tall woman with a good figure whose face was crumbling. She must feel pretty rotten, he guessed, knowing that she was getting old. Tough luck, sister! And suppose she wasn't married. She had to go on living, knowing she would have to die probably without ever having known what it was really like. Well, he knew that much, anyway. But it was like candy. The more you eat, the more you want, and damn it, he wanted it now with a dame as neat as some of the ones he'd seen along Seventy-first Street this morning. It was only natural for a guy to want some tail when he didn't have anything to do, and he was natural. And it would relieve the tedium of the day. He watched a mongrel dog scamper along, avoiding people, smelling at mail-boxes and lamp-posts. He saw a train swing around into the South Shore station. Christ, what a life!

Walking back toward Jeffery, he stepped into a corner drug store and got a slug. He perspired in the booth. No, he wouldn't call her. He inserted his slug.

“Return please, operator.”

He laid the slug on the counter, picked up his nickel, stopped by the magazine rack near the door and thumbed through a copy of an art magazine, looking at the pictures of naked and veiled women. Hot babies, but why the hell didn't it show them in different positions to give the whole works. He set the magazine back and selected a copy of
True Confessions,
opening it at a photograph of a dishevelled girl. Her dress was torn down one shoulder as she gripped a door knob, her face trapped in fear, with a man looking beastly, lurching toward her, his shirt torn, his face scratched and bleeding. Studs quickly skipped through the story, written in the first person, coming upon the scene represented in the paragraph where the girl was attacked. He hoped the fellow would succeed, and it would be described. But she escaped, and his eagerness sapped away.

 

 

The clerk stared at him with cold suspicion. He replaced the magazine and left the drug store. Girls weren't always so lucky as the gal who'd written the story. Not that dame named Irene whom Weary Reilley had raped. And with a lot of girls, when a guy got that far they wanted it, too, and a rape became a nice jazz. He nodded at McGoorty who doped by a squat mail-box, looking dumb. He crossed over Jeffery and stood at the newsstand in front of the bank, idly and half-interestedly looking at the headlines.

He yawned, and started home for lunch. Another day, and it was only half over. Christ, what should he do? And had she telephoned? Would she?

Studs entered the cigar store thinking that maybe she would call him up after work. Well, if she didn't, phrigg you, Catherine!

A runty Jewish clerk with a peaked sensitive face sat leaning forward against the counter, as if in mysterious confab with a group of fellows who looked like poolroom hangers-on. Studs caught the clerk's eye.

“O. K.,” he called lackadaisically.

A door opposite the entrance door opened, and Studs stepped into a familiar passageway.

“Let's have it,” said a fellow of the slugger type in a soda-jerker's white coat, his unintelligent face built upon a solid muscular neck; and a door behind him closed, bolting.

Although he knew there was no cause for fear, still he felt queer facing this bouncer.

“I'm going to frisk you, lad,” the bouncer said, tapping Studs from head to foot, under the armpits, the pockets, the chest, viewing Studs' hat and examining the inside, working with a speed and efficiency which caused Studs to remember how clumsy McGoorty had been doing the same thing in the morning.

“O. K.”

“Let's have it,” a voice from behind the inside door called, as if in the performance of some strange and mysterious rite.

Studs entered a large half-crowded room curtained with cigarette smoke, and the door was bolted behind him. A low counter ran along the opposite end of the room, behind which Phil, with a clean blue shirt, sat working, three fellows alongside of him bent forward over papers. Small groups were gathered around charts and scratch sheets along the wall, another group stood conversing near a ruled-off and lined blackboard, and men and women sat on camp chairs in the center of the room, talking, or working over papers, scratch sheets and pads, dope sheets, and various kinds of clippings. A hook-nosed fellow who needed a shave leaned against a wall reading a copy of
The Morning Telegraph.
There was movement back and forth, and in the left-hand comer of the room a crowd was bunched around a card table. He caught Phil's eye. Smiling obsequiously, Phil came from behind the counter.

“Gee, Studs, I'm glad to see you around. Why didn't you let me know you were coming so we could have had lunch together?”

“I didn't have anything exciting in prospect, so I thought I'd just drop around,” Studs said, from the corner of his eye noting the glances cast at him and Phil, thinking maybe they would take him for somebody important; no, he was Phil Rolfe's brother-in-law, he reflected bitterly.

“I'm glad you came, Studs. Only today is just another dull day with nothing special in the lineup.”

“I just wanted to say hello, and maybe lay a buck or two on a race for the fun of it. How's business?”

“Fair, Studs, fair. In fact, it's really a little more than fair, only everything that is clear I'm putting aside, because in a few weeks we're going to start enlarging here. I'm going to have more space, more black-jack tables, a roulette wheel, a table for poker and craps, and some nice-looking furniture around. Make it a swell-looking place, and it will bring in twice as much revenue.”

“Swell idea. And how's the kid?”

“Loretta, she's fine. And when are you coming down to see us again?”

“Oh, one of these nights.”

“We're always glad to have you, and bring Catherine along, too.”

“I will,” Studs said dully, resisting his temptation to tell Phil about their scrap.

They faced each other as if talked out.

“Oh, yes, say, Studs, want me to tip you off for a bet or two?”

“No, thanks, Phil, that would take the fun away, and I'd just be taking your dough gratis.”

“As you wish, Studs. But,” Phil lowered his voice, “between ourselves, the odds are against you if you try to play the ponies day in and day out. That's why we are able to stick in business.”

“I know,” Studs sagely said.

“Say, listen, Studs, the first race at Jamaica starts soon, and I got to get back there. I'll be with you again a little later. And if there's anything you want, just ask me,” Phil said solicitously.

“Thanks, Phil, I'll just hang around.”

He heard the door behind closing, and noted that many newcomers had arrived since his entry. He moved over to a group studying a scratch sheet on the wall.

“Which one do you like for the first, mister? It's a race for maidens, and the dope doesn't hold so good for them. I've been betting according to the dope from Sykes in
The Questioner
and I've never won a cent on a maidens' race,” a fat-faced woman of middle age said to him.

“Sorry, but I don't know much about it,” he said apologetically.

She turned to a woman on Studs' left who held a pencil between her teeth, newspapers, scraps of paper, dope sheets under her arm, and a copy of
The American Racing Record
opened before her.

“Good Luck to place,” the woman said, papers sliding from under her arm.

“How about you, Ma?” she asked, and Studs saw that the woman addressed as Ma was a squat and rotund Jewish lady of about fifty.

“I'm betting on Good Luck, Charcoal, Happy Hours, and Sweetheart, fifty cents on each to show,” Ma said, ashes from her cigarette dropping onto the stack of papers she held.

“Taking big chances, huh, Ma?” a stout man said.

“Tim, this is not fun. It's a business. I'm here to make a little money each day, and I play my system,” Ma said without removing the cigarette from her mouth.

“Last call for first at . . .”

Studs watched a flurried and excited rush to the counter for final bets, feeling out of it because he wasn't betting. But suddenly, he thought of them as chumps who just forked their dough over the counter on a proposition that couldn't win in the long run. There they all were, paying for Phil and Loretta's apartment and automobile. Trying to strike an attitude of indifference, he drew closer to the counter, hearing fragments of talk.

“All right, make it snappy!”

“Dollar on Hot Pepper to place.”

“House odds or track odds, madame?”

“Dollar on Hot Pepper to place, house odds.”

“Two, Hot Pepper, house odds.”

“Three on Happy Hours to show, track.”

“Fifty cents on Charcoal.”

“If I only win something today! My brothers are both out of work, and I have to support them. I got to win.”

Damn fools, throwing their dough down the gutter, Studs thought, priding himself. He felt so in the dumps that thinking he was superior to them helped him.

The books were closed and bettors scattered to the chairs and in small groups near the scratch sheets and elsewhere. Studs filtered back toward the door, watching newcomers enter and lose themselves in the crowd. Would they see him, take him for a regular around the place? He didn't know, though, if he wanted them to think that or not.

Sinking one hand in his pocket, holding a burning cigarette in the other, he struck a casual pose, glanced around. At the black-jack table the players went on unconcerned. Others all over were getting nervous, and he could see the strain and anxiety on many faces. He was glad he didn't feel that way and have their grief. But he had his own grief, didn't he, and it was bigger than a buck or two on a race.