Billy Bathgate

  Nobody said anything by way of reply except Dixie Davis, who kept nodding and smiling his vacuous uh-hums of encouragement, everyone else was stunned, all in all it had been a stunning day. Mr. Schultz kept talking, but when I judged the moment proper I quietly slipped out and went to my room. Mr. Schultz was excessive, anyone who worked for him should know that, he couldn’t stop, he took things to extremes, so that what might have started out as business, like everything else up here, he would want to do to the limit, he would go overboard in these feelings just as he did in his angers. I hardly thought we were in any danger of losing him to the priesthood, he just wanted a little more coverage, like another insurance policy, he’d all but said so, and unless you were a religious person yourself who thought there was just one denomination of God, that God came contained in one denomination and one only, he made a kind of superstitious sense, he always wanted more of everything, and if we were up here much longer he’d probably become a member of the Holy Spirit Protestant church too, God knows he could afford it, this was his usual blithe everyday voracity, Mr. Schultz’s urge to appropriate was stronger than his cunning, it was the central force of him, it operated all the time and wherever he happened to be, he’d appropriated speakeasies, beer companies, unions, numbers games, nightclubs, me, Miss Drew, and now he was appropriating Catholicism. That was all.

  FOURTEEN

  But now, not only was Mr. Schultz’s trial due to start in the first week of September, his conversion was to precede it, in one blow he had doubled the critical ceremonies of his life for us all to think about. The following days were very busy, another lawyer appeared whom I had never seen before, a dignified portly white-haired gentleman clearly not a familiar of gangsters or their mouthpieces, as I could tell by his stately and solemn demeanor and his old-fashioned glasses, which were supported solely by his nose and were tied to a black ribbon, from which they dangled when not in use, and also the fact that he brought with him a young assistant, also a lawyer, who carried both their briefcases. These new arrivals entailed an all-day closed-door conference in Mr. Schultz’s suite and a visit by everyone the next morning to the courthouse. The matter of preparations for Mr. Schultz’s religious induction entailed meetings with Father Montaine at the church. In addition there was all the usual business, which seemed to send everyone off in every direction except Drew Preston and me.

  So I found myself one morning on top of a living horse of the countryside holding very tightly to the reins, which seemed to me not enough in the way of structured support, and trying to communicate reasonably with this very tall and wide-backed beast who pretended he didn’t understand me. I had thought horses were supposed to be dumb. When I said something to slow him down he broke into a canter, and when I urged him to go faster to keep up with Miss Drew on her gray filly, he stopped and dipped his head and began to eat the sweet and luxuriant grasses of the field. His back was my realm but it was his back. I either bounced along hunched over him so that I wouldn’t fall, while Drew Preston beside me told me what I should be doing with my knees and how my heels should be hooked into the stirrups, fine points I wasn’t quite ready for, or I sat there in the sun looking past this grazer whose neck sloped down at a precipitous angle until his head disappeared entirely and listened to him tear bunches of grass with his big teeth and grind the stuff up in his molars while the field opened up between me and the only other living human in sight. This horse was an ordinary-enough-looking bay going to black between the eyes and across the rump, but in perversity he was a champion. I thought it was cruel of Mrs. Preston to arrange it for me to be humiliated by a horse. I achieved a new respect for Gene Autry, who not only rode so that it looked easy but managed to sing pretty much on key at the same time. My only consolation was that nobody from the gang was around to see me, and when we put the horses away in the farmer’s stable and walked back to town I loved the feel of the earth under my own two feet and thanked God and His sunny day for being alive, though slightly lame and sore-assed.

  We had a late breakfast in my tea shop. Nobody else was there and the woman was back in her kitchen, so we could talk quite freely, Mrs. Preston and I. I was awfully happy to be alone with her again. She had not once laughed at my struggles atop the horse, she had seemed seriously interested in my instruction and thought I would be a good rider after a few more lessons. I agreed. She looked very fine in her pale silk shirt with its big collar and open neck, and with her blue velvet riding jacket with the elbow patches of leather; we ate our cereal and eggs and toast in leisure and drank two cups of coffee and smoked my Wings while she asked me questions about myself and looked at me with the most intense concentration and listened to my answers as if nobody in all her life had ever interested her so much. I knew she looked at and listened to Mr. Schultz in this same manner but I didn’t mind. I thought having her attention was a great privilege and excitement, we were friends, intimates, and I couldn’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be than with her at this moment, in this shop out of sight of everyone, having breakfast together and talking in this natural way, although it wasn’t that natural since the situation impelled me to perform at my brilliant best.

  I told her I came from a criminal background.

  “Does that mean your father is a gangster?”

  “My father disappeared a long time ago. It means my neighborhood.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Between Third Avenue and Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx. And north of Claremont Avenue. It’s the same section Mr. Schultz comes from.”

  “I’ve never been to the Bronx.”

  “I didn’t think you had,” I said. “We live in a tenement. The bathtub is in the kitchen.”

  “Who is we?”

  “My mother and me. My mother works in a Jaundry. She has long gray hair. I think she’s an attractive woman or could be if she took care of herself. She’s very clean and neat, I don’t mean that. But she’s a little bit crazy. Why am I telling you these things? I’ve never talked about her to anybody and I feel bad now saying this about my own mother. She’s very kind to me. She loves me.”

  “I would think so.”

  “But she’s not quite right. She doesn’t care about looking her best, or having friends, or buying things or getting a boyfriend or anything like that. She doesn’t care what the neighbors think. She sort of lives in her head. She’s got the reputation of being a nut.”

  “I think she has had a hard life. How long has your father been gone?”

  “I was very little. I don’t even remember him. He was Jewish, I know that much.”

  “Isn’t your mother Jewish?”

  “She’s an Irish Catholic. Her name is Mary Behan. But she’d rather go to temple than to church. That’s the kind of thing I mean. She goes upstairs and sits with the women in the synagogue. She takes comfort from that.”

  “And what is the family name? Not Bathgate.”

  “Oh, you heard that.”

  “Yes, when you enrolled in Sunday school at the Holy Spirit. Now I know where you got it.” She was smiling at me. I thought she meant where I got the name, from Bathgate Avenue, the street of plenty, the street of the fruits of the earth. But she meant the habit of ending up in the wrong church. It took me a moment. She was trying not to laugh at her own joke, looking at me askance, hoping I wouldn’t take offense.

  “You know that never occurred to me,” I said. “That I was following in the crazy family footsteps.” I laughed and then she did. We had a good laugh, I loved her laughter, it was low and melodious, like a voice under water.

  Afterward, outside, with the sun burning down hot on the empty street, and without making a point of it, we naturally turned to stroll in the opposite direction from the hotel. She took off her jacket and slung it over her shoulder. I watched our reflections wavering in the empty store windows with their TO LET signs. Our reflections were black, very little color in them. Yet the street burned in light. I felt I knew Drew Preston this morning as she seemed to be i
n herself, without pretending anything or being afflicted with one of her large emotional wine-induced introspections, I felt I knew her under her brilliance of beauty, almost so that I forgot it, as she herself must looking out from it, and I thought I understood her as she must have understood herself, as someone maintaining her being while in the grasp of others. It was the kind of thing that would appear to the gang as slumming, which is why they had taken such offense, but was really more dangerous than that, more vulnerable of spirit, and I think what interested her about me was that I was in my way doing the same thing.

  We walked for several blocks. She had fallen silent. Every once in a while she glanced at me. Then all at once she took my hand and held it as we strolled along. Just as I had been giving her credit for a kind of real basic sensibleness, she had to hold my hand in broad daylight like a girlfriend. It made me very nervous but I couldn’t offend her by pulling away. I did look behind us to see if anyone we knew was on the street. I cleared my throat. “Maybe you don’t appreciate the position you’re in,” I said.

  “What position is that?”

  “Well you’re my governess.”

  “That’s what I thought, but apparently all this while you’ve been looking after me.”

  “I have. But to tell you the truth,” I said, “so far you seem to have done all right on your own.” The minute I said this I thought it sounded snide. “But I guess I would keep my word if you got into a jam,” I said by way of expiation.

  “What kind of a jam.”

  “Well for instance it’s not good if you aren’t in this walk of life to have seen anything, to know anything,” I said. “They don’t like witnesses. They don’t like it for people to have something on them.”

  “I have something on them,” she said as if the idea was hard to understand.

  “Just a little,” I said. “On the other hand nobody outside the gang knows you do so that’s a slightly better position than, say, if the D.A. knew you were on that boat and wanted to know what had happened on it. Then you might be in serious danger.”

  She was thoughtful. “You don’t talk as if you’re one of them,” she said.

  “Well I’m not. Not yet. I’m trying to catch on,” I said.

  “He has a high regard for you, he says only good things about you.”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, that you’re very smart. And that you have guts. That is not an expression I’m particularly fond of. He could have said you’re bold, or feisty or fearless, he could have said you’re stouthearted. Would you mind my asking how old you are?”

  “Sixteen,” I said exaggerating only slightly.

  “Oh my. Oh my,” she said as she glanced at me and lowered her eyes. She was silent for a moment. She removed her hand from mine, which was a great relief although I longed for her to put it back. She said, “Well you must have done something for them to have heard about you and chosen you above all the others.”

  “What others? It’s not like getting into Harvard University, Mrs. Preston. I happened to catch their attention, that’s all. I connected. This gang, they make things up as they go along. They use what’s to hand.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m here the same way you are.”

  “I didn’t understand. I thought you were even related in some way.”

  We went down the hill to the river and walked to the middle of the bridge and stood at the wood rail and looked down at the water coming down the wide shallows and breaking with rushing intent around all the rocks and boulders.

  “If I have something on them,” Mrs. Preston said, finally, “don’t you?”

  “If I don’t catch on,” I said, “yes, I will have something on them. If for some reason they decide against me. Yes. Nobody can tell what Mr. Schultz will do,” I said. “I’ll be a danger to them if he decides I am.”

  She turned to look at me. Her expression was troubled, there might even have been a glimmering fear in her though I could not be sure in this light that passed like waves of summer heat through those pale green eyes. If she was frightened for me I didn’t want that, it was undermining, I thought if she had the reckless assurance of her own charmed life she should grant me mine. This may have been the dangerous moment of our alliance, when it was clear in its extent, that we actually cared for each other, I could not bear to be contemplated as overmatched, as a lamb among wolves, I wanted equality with her. I pretended to think she was in fear for herself.

  “I don’t really think you have to worry,” I said, with a harsh peremptory edge to my voice. “So far as I can judge Mr. Schultz has every reason to believe you’re trustworthy. And even if he didn’t I think you can probably rely on the fact that he would do as little as he could to convince himself that you are.”

  “He would? Why?”

  “Why, Miss Lola, I mean Miss Drew, I mean Mrs. Preston? Why?” I thought now I had hurt her and I felt bad. I was showing her I was a man with a man’s crude judgments. But then I backed away from her on the wood bridge and she knew what I was up to and she was smiling again and I started to laugh, and now she lunged forward to grab my hand and as I tried to pull away she said, “Why, why, no tell me, tell me,” like a little girl in her entreaties and she pulled me to her.

  We stood there. I said feeling the heat of her on my face: “Because as everyone except you seems to know, Mr. Schultz is a pushover for blondes.”

  “How do they know?”

  “Everyone knows,” I said. “It was even in the papers.”

  “I don’t read the papers,” she whispered.

  My throat had gone dry. “How can you know everything you need to know if you don’t read the papers?” I said.

  “What is it I need to know?” she said gazing into my eyes.

  “Well maybe if you don’t work for a living you don’t need to know anything,” I said. “But some of us trying to learn a trade have to be up on the developments.”

  I felt weak in the knees, overwhelmed, a little sick in the heat, I felt as if I was disappearing into her eyes. I wanted her in such totality of desire that it was diffuse, aching all through me, like my own blood heat, I wanted her in my fingertips and my knees and my brain and my face and in the little bones of my feet. Only the cock was not at this moment affected. I wanted her behind the palate, where tears begin, in the throat, where words crumble on the breaking voice.

  “Here’s the latest development,” she said. And she kissed me on the mouth.

  On Sunday morning everyone was standing all turned out clean and shining in front of the Church of St. Barnabas, even Lulu, who wore a dark blue double-breasted suit that was tailored to make as discreet as possible the bulge of the shoulder holster and piece under his left arm. This would have to have been the last week in August, a new weather was creeping up on the days, like a different kind of light, on the hillside behind my room some of the leafy trees had turned pale with little yellowing patches, and here in front of the church a wind was blowing along the street from the river so that as women of the parish climbed the steps the hems of their Sunday dresses furled around their legs. My own summer suit felt air-cooled and as we stood waiting my careful haircomb ruffled up and began to break the crust given it by my Vitalis.

  Drew Preston held on to a big holiday hat that hid her eyes from me. She had white lace gloves on her hands that just barely came up to the wrist. She wore a dark conservative dress and hose with the seams proper and straight down her calves and low-heeled black pumps, which made her almost invisible in this setting. At her side Mr. Schultz was nervous and kept picking at the little carnation pinned to his lapel, he unbuttoned the jacket of his gray pinstripe to yank up his trousers, and then he discovered the buttons of the vest were not in the right holes and tore open the vest and rebuttoned it, and then he reset his jacket on his shoulders and then brushed imaginary lint from the sleeves, and then he discovered his shoelace was untied and was about to bend down when Mr. Berman tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a car
that had just come around the corner and pulled up to the curb and sat there with its motor running. “He’s here,” Mr. Schultz said and a moment later another car, a coupé, came around the corner and drove past us and pulled up at the end of the block, and then a third car appeared and it moved very slowly along the street and came to a stop where we were, a black Chrysler with the wheels hidden by the fenders, I think it must have been a custom-made model, I had never seen one like it. Mr. Schultz moved forward and we all stood in rank behind him as two unsmiling men got out and looked at all of us in that way that only cops and mob men consider people, with an officious but expertly quick assessment, and they gave curt nods to Mr. Schultz and Lulu and Irving, and one of them went up the steps and peered into the church and the other looked up and down the street with his hand on the rear car door and then the first one nodded from the top of the steps and the second opened the car door and a thin dapper man, quite short, got out and Mr. Schultz who had been standing by patiently, almost humbly, embraced him with joy, and he was someone whose name I will not give even here and now these many years later, a man I recognized immediately from his pictures in the Mirror, the scar under his jaw, the one droopy eyelid, the wavy hair, in the instant I saw him I found myself instinctively moving behind someone just out of his line of sight. He had a dusky sallow coloring that was almost lavender, he was shorter and slighter than I had imagined, he wore a well-tailored pearl gray single-breasted suit, and he politely shook hands with Abbadabba Berman and Lulu and Mickey and warmly embraced Irving and then was introduced to Drew Preston and he said in a whispery voice he was pleased to meet her and he said looking up at the blue sky, “What a nice day this is, Dutch, I think you must already have an in with II Papa,” and everyone laughed, especially Mr. Schultz, he was so happy, so honored that a man of this position would agree to come all the way up from New York to speak for him as his godparent and present him formally to the priest for admission to the Church.