The Moth

  I went over to the gate, and when Hosey saw me he began to yell like some kind of a movie. “Jack! Don’t you know me? It’s Hosey! That hoboed all over Louisiana and Texas and Nevada with you and Buck? Jack! I’m ready to go to work. Remember that job we was going to give each other, whichever one hit the jackpot first?”

  He meant it so hard he sounded phony. Even Mulligan turned his back. I blinked and said: “Well, Mulligan, he thinks he knows me, that’s a cinch.”

  “Why, sir, that’s ridiculous.”

  “No, he thinks I’m a pal.”

  “Pal my eye. It’s just a racket—”

  He went roaring on, while Hosey stared and listened. Then I said: “Anyway, get rid of him.”

  “You bet I’ll get rid of him.”

  He started for the gate with his shoulders up, but I stopped the rough stuff. “Look, he’s human too.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, sir. But O.K. I let the cops do it.”

  But I took out ten dollars, shoved it through the wire at Hosey, and said: “My friend, I don’t know who you think I am, but the times are bad, so buy yourself a meal and a bath and a flop, and keep the change. And if I ever run into somebody named Dixon, I’ll give him your—”

  “But—Jack!”

  “Listen, goddam it, you want this ten or not?”

  “Why sure, but—”

  “Then take it and stop calling me Jack.”

  “... And what would I call you, then?”

  “Try mister, for a change.”

  “Mister what?”

  “Just mister, pal.”

  He took the ten, turned away, and walked off. I started inside. Then something hit me on the head. It was a stone. We turned, and Hosey was standing there, in the middle of the street. “You dirty son of a bitch! I mean you, Jack. You heel! You yellow-bellied rat, that would do this to a friend! But I’ll get you for it. I’ll—”

  Mulligan started for him, but I caught his arm. A drawstring was tightening around my belly, but I knew nothing could be done about it today, and the better I acted now, when the tote was made later, the better it would be for me. We stood there, and he threw more stones, and screamed and cussed and raved, and then when some kids gathered around, he went away.

  It was a long twenty-four hours, a longer forty-eight, and a still longer seventy-two, but there was nothing I could do, so I did it. I shifted between the refinery, the Jergins Trust Building, and the apartment. Each night I’d stay in Beverly, and put on a black tie, and take her some place in the Strip. Because getting indicted for murder would be bad, and being claimed by some bum as a pal and college chum, that would be still worse. I meant, if I could possibly stack it up that way, that she’d never know anything about it. I drank champagne and called for more, but not enough more to get oiled and talk. Just enough more to have nothing on my mind at all, except what a swell party and what a swell girl. Everything swell, except by belly, which was getting slightly shriveled.

  The third day, at the Jergins Trust Building, Lida came back around eleven and said there was a police officer out there that wanted to see me. I had her send him in. He was a young guy, and I saw him take a flash at my old football pictures, that Hannah had blown up and framed and hung there. He said nothing about them, though, but sat down and got out a blue paper. “Mr. Dillon, you got somebody here, working for you, by the name of Dixon?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You ever use that name? Yourself?”

  “State your business.”

  I made it quiet, courteous, and cold. He looked at me some seconds, which is something all cops make a specialty of doing, and I dialed a call. It was to Rohrer, and I told him to stand by for something important later, that under no circumstances should he leave. As he never did leave, except when quitting time came, he was all crossed up, but that didn’t bother me, and I hung up. I had given an order and somebody had taken it, that was the main thing, and Mr. Cop had to wait, and speak when I was ready to be spoken to. It wasn’t much, but it was something. “... I’m serving a warrant, Mr. Dillon. For the arrest of a party known as Jack Dixon. However, as our information is that he’s a pretty big shot in the Seven-Star organization, and in fact is believed to be the general manager of it, it looks like he might be you. It’s up to you whether you accept service or not, though I may as well tell you I have the power to take you in custody on this warrant, whatever you do about it.”

  “Well—could I read it?”

  “If you would, that might help.”

  It was on complaint of the Las Vegas, Nevada, police, which meant that Hosey had spilled what he knew and some telegraphing had been going on. Beyond “suspected of felony” it told me nothing, but reading it gave me time to think. I knew dogging it with this guy wouldn’t do. His job was to bring me in, and if I got tough and he rode over me, I had lost the advantage I’d had, from the football pictures, and maybe his wanting to be friendly without my knowing it. And yet the last thing I should do was get myself booked, because that made it a public record, and led straight to the newspapers, Beverly, and her. I said: “Well—I guess I know about this. A bum showed up, called me by this name, and promoted a few bucks off me. Then he said we were buddies, and when I didn’t ask him in, he got sore and went off, calling me names and throwing rocks at me... Well, you’ve got nothing to do with that. I always say, if a guy says he’s the victim of a mistake, O.K., but he should do what he can to straighten things out. I’m not accepting service of this warrant in any way, shape, or form. I don’t know what the Las Vegas police want with me, I’ve never been to Las Vegas, and can’t imagine why they’ve filed this complaint. But, just in a friendly way, why don’t I go back with you, talk with whoever is in charge, and see if we can’t straighten it out?”

  “I would suggest that.”

  “Wait till I make a call.”

  I dialed the refinery again, got Mulligan on the line, and told him to hop in a cab and get over to the police station, as the bum was making trouble. Getting Mulligan in it wasn’t from some angles the best judgment in the world, because my best play would be to go down there alone, with no lawyers, watchmen, or anybody else to help me. But Mulligan had been a cop and spoke their language, he thought Hosey was a phony, and he worked for me.

  At the police station, which is in the city hall, we went in a room back of the main desk, and Mulligan was there ahead of us, sitting with Chief Lucas, that I’d met at the fire, a clerk, a heavy-set man in a blue suit, that looked like a detective, and a man in a blue blouse, that looked like a turnkey. Mulligan was roaring, pretty sore, and kept it up after I was brought in. There were two or three office chairs with hard seats, though Mulligan, the Chief, and the man in the blue suit were sitting on soft ones, upholstered in leather. I didn’t sit down until the Chief motioned me to. Then I took a hard chair. I took care not to be sore, indignant, or funny. I was just a guy the cops wanted to talk to, and that took it pretty serious. The cop who brought me explained that I hadn’t accepted service on the warrant, but had come on a voluntary basis, to give any help that I could. That seemed O.K. with the Chief, because he spoke to me then, by name. “You understand, though, Mr. Dillon, that if any evidence comes to light of a criminal kind, we may still have to put you under arrest while the Las Vegas police start extradition proceedings to send you back to Nevada?”

  “Back there? I haven’t left there yet.”

  That got a laugh, but I played it straight and said: “Where this goddam fool got the idea I’m named Dixon or have been to Nevada I don’t know, but wherever it is I’ll face it, and I’ve got no fear how it’ll come out. I never robbed any banks that I know of, but if I did walk in my sleep and they can prove it on me—then O.K.”

  That seemed all right, so far, though cops are a twenty-minute lot, and you can’t always tell how you’re doing with them. However, he nodded, and said: “I think the simplest way would be to get this guy in and let him chirp.”

  “What’s your name???
?

  “Hosey Brown.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Chillicothe, Ohio.”

  “What you do?”

  “Structural iron.”

  “When you work last?”

  “That was in Spokane, sir. In Spokane, Washington, before the depression hit. I haven’t been able to get work since. I applied, but couldn’t hit no jobs.”

  “You done time?”

  “... I don’t just recollect.”

  “What you mean, you don’t just recollect?”

  “Chief, I was in an accident when I was twenty-two years old. I got hit when a I-beam fell on me. I don’t know what I done for two years after that, or where I was.”

  “You don’t remember Lewisburg?”

  “No, sir, not good.”

  “But a little bit?”

  “I hear tell of it, yes.”

  “You know this man here.”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Jack Dixon.”

  “Where was this you knew him?”

  “I met him first just outside of Chattanooga. Him and me, we got a fellow up that was fixing to die, name of Buck Mitchell. Then him and me and Buck, we traveled together for must of been nigh on to a year maybe, maybe two years. We was buddies, and we went all over the South and Southwest together.”

  “You pull any jobs? You and him?”

  “Him and Buck, not me.”

  “What was you doing while they was pulling jobs?”

  “Just waiting, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “Up the street, generally.”

  “Not looking?”

  “Of course I could see what was going on. But I never helped on no jobs, no, sir. I was up the street.”

  “Anybody bother them?”

  “I don’t just recollect. Some time, maybe.”

  “And what did you do, then?”

  “Well, sir, what could I do?”

  “You could holler, couldn’t you?”

  “Well, I guess I could, yes, I could holler.”

  “Did you?”

  “... I don’t just recollect.”

  “Then you were lookout man?”

  “No, sir, not me.”

  “And where was it you pulled these jobs?”

  “He pulled them. Him and Buck.”

  “Where was this?”

  “That was Phoenix, Yuma, Indio, Banning, I don’t know where-all. The last place, where Buck got killed, was Las Vegas.”

  “You see that?”

  “I was up the street waiting.”

  “And hollering?”

  “I tell you I never done nothing.”

  “What happened on this hold-up?”

  “Well, I was up the street, waiting, and Buck and Jack, they were to steal a car, first. Then here they come, in a little green coupe, and blowed the horn at me, and turned around and went up the street near this here filling station where they hoped to get the money. Then here they come back to the filling station in the car and went in to get gas. Then Buck and Jack got out and went in the men’s room. Then they come out. Then Jack got in. Then Buck reached for the gun. Then a fellow stepped out from behind a car that was parked on the other side of the grease jack, leveled a gun, and then there was a shot. And Buck dropped. And then Jack come by in the car hell to split. I run out and yelled at him, but he drove off.”

  “That car—was it a Chevvie, 1933 coupe?”

  “I don’t know. It was green.”

  “You didn’t see it later?”

  “Not after that.”

  “You’re sure you’re not the one that ripped the seat cushions where it was abandoned out there by the grade crossing?”

  “Not me, no, sir.”

  “When was all this?”

  “Couple of years ago.”

  “Two years ago, in Las Vegas?”

  “Could a been two, three years ago.”

  “Well listen, make up your mind.”

  “Maybe four year.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Two, three, four year.”

  The Chief thought while the clerk wound up some notes on what was said, then motioned to the turnkey, who went out. Two or three guys came in that were cops, by their brick color, but they were in plain clothes. They sat down near me. The turnkey came back with two or three guys that, by their looks, were from the cells, then went out again. One had no coat on, the others had shabby clothes, and none had a shave. And then it came to me what this was: It was an identification. Through that door in a minute somebody would come to pick me out of the line. I don’t know if ever in my life my head worked faster than it did then. I went over it in a flash, what I had looked like in Las Vegas four years ago, when I was hard, weatherbeaten, and thin, and what I looked like now, with soft, hundred-fifty-dollar tweeds on, a dark coat of tan, thirty pounds more weight, and a little Hollywood mustache I had sprouted. And I caught it with my eye, what a bum looked like, from the set of these faces the turnkey had brought in, that hadn’t smiled in a month of Sundays, that had a dull heavy film on their eyes, and were covered with fuzz and grease and dirt. I knew I still had a chance, but something kept telling me—smile, smile, smile! Don’t look like these bums! Don’t be part of the line-up at all! Keep your head up, give out with it so anybody can see you, don’t turn away like these guys are going to do, and SMILE! Smile so it COULDN’T BE YOU!

  The door was still open, where the turnkey had gone out again, and through it came the station-house cat, a big black thing with yellow eyes and a red ribbon around his neck. I didn’t overplay it. I didn’t make a corny dive for him and grab him up in a hurry. I made motions at him with my fingers, and grinned at him, and whispered at him, and picked him up. Then I rolled him out on my knee and began scratching his chin.

  “I couldn’t be sure. It’s been some time ago. But I’d say it was him. This one here, with no coat on.”

  I looked up, kind of like I didn’t know what was going on, then went back to the cat. The turnkey had come back again, and with him was a little guy, around fifty maybe, that I’d never even known by name, but that had taken care of night calls at the motel where Hosey and Buck and I had stayed before pulling our job, and robbed the fellow of his gun. I didn’t pay the least attention. I kept my head up while I was whispering to the cat. My heart skipped a beat when they brought in the guy in the filling station, the one that had sold us gas. But he didn’t point to anybody at all. The Chief said O.K., the detectives went, all but the one in the blue suit, and the turnkey motioned Hosey and the prisoners and the two guys from Las Vegas, and took them out and closed the door. The Chief turned to me. “Mr. Dillon, what do you know about this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Just nothing at all?”

  “Just nothing, period, new paragraph.”

  “You never been to Las Vegas?”

  “No.”

  “O.K.”

  The guy in the blue suit got up, and it turned out he was a Las Vegas detective. He said: “Well, Chief, it looked to me like a phony, but you got to do something about it, even if you think it’s a bum trying to promote a free ride. He saw the job, I’m sure of that, and probably traveled with a pair of yeggs a week or two, though not regular. One or two of those jobs, like the one he talked about in Yuma, were never pulled. But he never once mentioned that the one who got away in Las Vegas was a dark gimpy guy, and he never had the right name of the man that was killed. Of course, he could have called himself Buck, and maybe he used the name Mitchell. But the papers we took off him said Horace Burns, and if he doesn’t know that, then we’re chasing our tail to listen to him. Release this gentleman, I’d say.”

  “I’m going to. Sorry, Mr. Dillon.”

  “It’s O.K. Cute cat.”

  “I found that gentleman in an alley when he was two days old and didn’t have his eyes open yet. I raised him with an eye dropper and milk warmed on that electric heater beside your chair
, and he’s never known any home but this one. To him a cell is a front parlor.”

  “Pretty eyes.”

  “And fight his weight in wild ones.”

  “Nice seeing you again.”

  Outside, Mulligan went off to scare up a cab and I stood there waiting for him to come back. Then back of me I heard something, and turned. Hosey came running, and ducked across the street, to the park. After him came the guy from the motel and the guy from the filling station. When they caught up with him, the guy from the motel hit him and he staggered and then the guy from the filling station hit him and he went down. I turned my back, and when a cab came with Mulligan alongside, I got in quick and closed my eyes. “What’s the matter, Mr. Dillon?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “You sick?”

  “Just tired.”

  He gave my apartment address and we started up. Ahead of us, walking along, were the two guys from Las Vegas, the one from the filling station and the one from the motel. In the park was something lying on the grass. I felt big and cruel and cold, a thick, heavy-shouldered bunch of whatever it takes to be a success. As we turned into the ocean front it flashed through my mind I was going to do the one last thing, or try to, that I would have to do to hold what I had, so I could never be pried loose. Branch, at last, had decided to give her a divorce, and I meant, as soon as she was free, at the end of this interlocutory year they’ve got in California, to marry her and stay married to her. At least, even if I was a little shy on love, I could breathe easy, and if any more Hoseys came along, they might dent me but they couldn’t break me.

  25

  ALL THAT TIME, THAT is since I consolidated the company and began getting my picture in the paper now and then, I’d been hearing from Denny. Every six months or so he’d write me, catching me up on the news back in Baltimore, and winding up with a gag P.S. that propositioned me for a job in the big oil empire, as he called Seven-Star. It was from him I found out my father was failing, that the Leggs were living on University Parkway, “snug enough on what they got when they sold the hotel”; that Sheila and Nancy were in mourning for my mother, “though just exactly why, considering the status quo ante, deponent saith not, not knowing.” He acted like most of the things, like my father’s health and the sale of the hotel and the death of my mother, I already knew about, and he was just putting in his two bits’ worth. But I’d heard nothing, or next to nothing, in seven years, and most of what he told me, except now and then something like Byrd getting made president of the university, depressed the hell out of me. The death of my mother, and specially hearing it on top of a gag, knocked me for a loop. It was one more break with what I might have been. Denny seemed to think I knew about his marriage too, and had quite a lot to say about the heat being on from his better, “oh distinctly better half if we may rely on her view of it,” to get out and get busy, to earn baby some shoes, now that his father had left him nothing but a lot of worthless stock in the way of an inheritance. But who he was married to, and when it had happened, were things I knew nothing about.