Only way to say it is to say it.
When I’m in the living room, what I hear is a snapping sound. Like a twig breaking. It’s faint, it’s coming from the back of the house, and if I’m outside where I’m supposed to be I most likely don’t hear it at all.
And after the twig snaps, there’s like a little sigh. Like the air going out of something.
“I think she’s gone.” That’s what he said, and as soon as I heard the words I knew she was gone, and I realized I knew it from the moment I heard the twig snap.
The twig?
Easy to call it that, but I don’t remember seeing any twigs in that bedroom.
* * *
I didn’t say anything, and Lew didn’t say anything, and then one night he did. Slow night, quiet night, and we’re in the car. I remember he was driving that night.
Out of the blue he says, “There’s people in this world who never have a chance.”
I knew he was talking about her.
I just sat there, and a minute or two later he says, “Say she pulls through. So he kills her next time, or the time after that. Or the twentieth time after that. You call that a life, Charlie?”
“No.”
We caught a red light. More often than not what we’d do is slow down enough to see there was no cross traffic and then coast on through it, but this time he braked to a stop and waited for the light to change.
And while he was waiting he took his hands off the wheel and sat there looking at ’em.
The light went to green and we moved on. Two, three blocks along he said, “This way she’s in a better place. And he’s where he belongs. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, Charlie?”
“No,” I said. “No idea.”
It wasn’t that much longer before they moved me to the Hollywood division, which was an interesting place to be in those days. Not that you didn’t get domestics there, too, and every other damn thing, but the people were a little different. The same in many ways, but a little different.
Where was I?
Uh, the Hollywood division.
No, before that. Never mind, I remember. It was maybe another month I was with Lew, before the move to Hollywood. And he never brought up the subject again, and I for sure never said anything, but there was one thing he kept doing, and it made me glad when they transferred me. I’d have been glad anyway, because the move amounted to a promotion, but it gave me a particular reason to be glad to get out of that particular radio car.
What he would do, he’d go silent and look at his hands. And I couldn’t see him do that without picturing those hands taking hold of that woman’s head and breaking her neck.
I guess he saw the same thing.
And is that why he sat up late one night, all by himself, and gave his gun a good cleaning? Maybe yes, maybe no. The things he supposedly did during the Zoot Suit riots, far as I know he had no trouble living with them, or the other three Mexicans he killed, and he might have been the same way with this.
Because, you know, it was the only way that woman was gonna get out of it, the mess she was in. Look at it that way and he was doing the humane thing. And it was the perfect opportunity, because her husband already thought she was dead and that he’d killed her. So this way she’s out of it, and this way he goes away for it, and that’s the end of it.
So would it make Lew kill himself a few years down the line? My guess is it wouldn’t. My guess is he was feeling low one night, and he took a long look at his life, not what he’d done but what he had to look forward to.
Stuck the gun in his mouth just to see how it felt.
Here’s something else I never told anybody. I been that far myself. I remember the taste of the metal. I remember—now I haven’t thought of this in ages, but I remember thinking I had to be careful not to chip a tooth. One trigger pull away from the next world and I’m worried about a chipped tooth.
I never broke any woman’s neck, or shot any Mexicans, or did any big things that weighed all that heavy on my mind. But looking at it one way, Lew pulled the trigger and I didn’t, and on that score that’s all the difference there was between us.
Of course that don’t mean I won’t go home now and do it. I’ve still got a gun. I guess I can clean it any time I have a mind to.
SPEAKING OF GREED
The doctor shuffled the pack of playing cards seven times, then offered them to the soldier, who sat to his right. The soldier cut them, and the doctor picked up the deck and dealt two cards down and one up to each of the players—the policeman, the priest, the soldier, and himself.
The game was poker, seven-card stud, and the priest, who was high on the board with a queen, opened the betting for a dollar, tossing in a chip to keep the doctor’s ante comfortable. The soldier called, as did the doctor and the policeman.
Over by the fireplace, the room’s other occupant, an elderly gentleman, dozed in an armchair.
The doctor gave each player a second up-card. The policeman caught a king, the priest a nine in the same suit with his queen, the soldier a jack to go with his ten. The doctor, who’d had a five to start with, caught another five for a pair. That made him high on the board, but he took a look at his hole cards, frowned, and checked his hand. The policeman checked as well, and the priest gave his Roman collar a tug and bet two dollars.
The soldier said, “Two dollars? It’s a dollar limit until a pair shows, isn’t it?”
“Doctor has a pair,” the priest pointed out.
“So he does,” the soldier agreed, and flicked a speck of dust off the sleeve of his uniform. “Of course he does, he was high with his fives. Still, it’s one of the anomalies of the game, isn’t it? Priest gets to bet more, not because his own hand just got stronger, but because his opponent’s did.
“What are you so proud of, Priest? Queens and nines? Four hearts?”
“I hope I’m not too proud,” the priest said. “Pride’s a sin, after all.”
“Well, I’m proud enough to call you,” the soldier said, as did the doctor and the policeman. The doctor dealt another round, and now the policeman was high with a pair of kings. He too was in uniform, and wordlessly he tossed a pair of chips into the center of the table.
The priest had caught a third heart, the seven. He thought for a long moment before tossing four chips into the pot. “Raise,” he said softly.
“Priest, Priest, Priest,” said the soldier, checking his own cards. “Have you got your damned flush already? If you had two pair, well, I just caught one of your nines. But if I’m chasing a straight that’s doomed to lose to the flush you’ve already got...” The words trailed off, and the soldier sighed and called. So did the doctor, and the policeman looked at his kings and picked up four chips, as if to raise back, then tossed in two of them and returned the others to his stack.
On the next round, three of the players showed visible improvement. The policeman, who’d had a three with his kings, caught a second three for two pair. The priest added the deuce of hearts and showed a four flush on board. The soldier’s straight got longer with the addition of the eight of diamonds. The doctor, who’d had a four with his pair of fives, acquired a ten.
The policeman bet, the priest raised, the soldier grumbled and called. The doctor called without grumbling. The policeman raised back, and everyone called.
“Nice little pot,” the doctor said, and gave everyone a down card.
The betting limits were a dollar until a pair showed, then two dollars until the last card, at which time you could bet five dollars. The policeman did just that, tossing a red chip into the pot. The priest picked up a red chip to call, thought about it, picked up a second red chip, and raised five dollars. The soldier said something about throwing good money after bad.
“There’s no such thing,” the doctor said.
“As good money?”
“As bad money.”
“It turns bad,” said the soldier, “as soon as I throw it in. I was straight in five and got to watch
everybody outdraw me. Now I’ve got a choice of losing to Policeman’s full house or Priest’s heart flush, depending on which one’s telling the truth. Unless you’re both full of crap.”
“Always a possibility,” the doctor allowed.
“The hell with it,” the soldier said, and tossed in a red chip and five white chips. “I call,” he said, “with no expectation of profit.” The doctor was wearing green scrubs, with a stethoscope peeping out of his pocket. He looked at his cards, looked at everyone else’s cards, and called. The policeman raised. The priest looked troubled, but took the third and final raise all the same, and everybody called.
“Full,” the policeman said, and turned over a third three. “Threes full of kings,” he said, but the priest was shaking his head, even as he turned over his hole cards, two queens and a nine. “Queens full,” said the priest.
“Oh, hell,” said the soldier. “A full house masquerading as a flush. Not that I have a right to complain—the flush would have beaten me just as handily. Got it on the last card, didn’t you, Priest? All that raising, and you went in with two pair and a four flush.”
“I had great expectations,” the priest admitted.
“The Lord will provide and all that,” said the soldier, turning over his up cards. The priest, beaming, reached for the chips.
The doctor cleared his throat, turned over his hole cards. Two of them were fives, matching the pair of fives he’d had on board.
“Four fives,” the policeman said reverently. “Beats your boat, Priest.”
“So it does,” said the priest. “So it does.”
“Had them in the first four cards,” the doctor said.
“You never bet them.”
“I never had to,” said the doctor. “You fellows were doing such a nice job of it, I saw no reason to interfere.”
And he reached out both hands to gather in the chips.
* * *
“Greed,” said the priest.
The policeman was shuffling the cards, the doctor stacking his chips, the soldier looking off into the middle distance, as if remembering a battle in a long-forgotten war. The priest’s utterance stopped them all.
“I beg your pardon,” said the doctor. “Just what have I done that’s so greedy? Play the hand so as to maximize my gains? That, it seems to me, is how one is intended to play the game.”
“If you’re not trying to win,” said the soldier, “you shouldn’t be sitting at the table.”
“Maybe Priest feels you were gloating,” the policeman suggested. “Salivating over your well-gotten gains.”
“Was I doing that?” The doctor shrugged. “I wasn’t aware of it. Still, why play if you’re not going to relish your triumph?”
The priest, who’d been shaking his head, now held up his hands as if to ward off everyone’s remarks. “I uttered a single word,” he protested, “and intended no judgment, believe me. Perhaps it was the play of the hand that prompted my train of thought, perhaps it was a reflection on the entire ethos of poker that put it in motion. But, when I spoke the word, I was thinking neither of your own conduct, Doctor, nor of our game itself. No, I was contemplating the sin of greed, of avarice.”
“Greed is a sin, eh?”
“One of the seven deadly sins.”
“And yet,” said the soldier, “there was a character in a film who argued famously that greed is good. And isn’t the profit motive at the root of much of human progress?”
“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” the policeman said, “but it’s the desire for what one can in fact grasp that makes one reach out in the first place. And isn’t it natural to want to improve one’s circumstances?”
“All the sins are natural,” said the priest. “All originate as essential impulses and become sins when they overstretch their bounds. Without sexual desire the human race would die out. Without appetite we’d starve. Without ambition we’d graze like cattle. But when desire becomes lust, or appetite turns to gluttony, or ambition to greed—”
“We sin,” the doctor said.
The priest nodded. The policeman gave the cards another shuffle. “You know,” he said, “that reminds me of a story.”
“Tell it,” the others urged, and the policeman put down the deck of cards and sat back in his chair.
* * *
Many years ago (said the policeman) there were two brothers, whom I’ll call George and Alan Walker. They came from a family that had had some money and respectability at one time, and their paternal grandfather was a physician, but he was also a drunk, and eventually patients stopped going to him, and he wound up with an office on Railroad Avenue, where he wrote prescriptions for dope addicts. Somewhere along the way his wife ran off, and he started popping pills, and the time came when they didn’t combine too well with what he was drinking, and he died.
He had three sons and a daughter, and all but the youngest son drifted away. The one who stayed—call him Jack—married a girl whose family had also come down in the world, and they had two boys, George and Alan.
Jack drank, like his father, but he didn’t have a medical degree, and thus he couldn’t make a living handing out pills. He wasn’t trained for anything, and didn’t have any ambition, so he picked up day work when it came his way, and sometimes it was honest and sometimes it wasn’t. He got arrested a fair number of times, and he went away and did short time on three or four occasions. When he was home he slapped his wife around some, and was generally free with his hands around the house, but no more than you’d expect from a man like that living a life like that.
Now everybody can point to individuals who grew up in homes like the Walkers’ who turned out just fine. Won scholarships, put themselves through college, worked hard, applied themselves, and wound up pillars of the community. No reason it can’t happen, and often enough it does, but sometimes it doesn’t, and it certainly didn’t for George and Alan Walker. They were discipline problems in school and dropped out early, and at first they stole hubcaps off cars, and then they stole cars.
And so on.
Jack Walker had been a criminal himself, in a slipshod amateurish sort of way. The boys followed in his footsteps, but improved on his example. They were professionals from very early on, and you would have to say they were good at it. They weren’t Raffles, they weren’t Professor Moriarty, they weren’t Arnold Zeck, and God knows they weren’t Willie Sutton or Al Capone. But they made a living at it and they didn’t get caught, and isn’t that enough for us to call them successful?
They always worked together, and more often than not they used other people as well. Over the years, they tended to team up with the same three men. I don’t know that it would be precisely accurate to call the five of them a gang, but it wouldn’t be off by much.
One, Louis Creamer, was a couple of years older than the Walkers—George, I should mention, was himself a year and a half older than his brother Alan. Louis looked like a big dumb galoot, and that’s exactly what he was. He loved to eat and he loved to work out with weights in his garage, so he kept getting bigger. It’s hard to see how he could have gotten any dumber, but he didn’t get any smarter, either. He lived with his mother—nobody knew what happened to the father, if he was ever there in the first place—and when his mother died Louis married the girl he’d been keeping company with since he dropped out of school. He moved her into his mother’s house and she cooked him the same huge meals his mother used to cook, and he was happy.
Early on, Louis got work day to day as a bouncer, but the day came when he hit a fellow too hard, and the guy died. A good lawyer probably could have gotten him off, but Louis had a bad one, and he wound up serving a year and a day for involuntary manslaughter. When he got out nobody was in a rush to hire him, and he fell in with the Walkers, who didn’t have trouble finding a role for a guy who was big and strong and did what you told him to do.
Eddie O’Day was small and undernourished and as close as I’ve ever seen to a born thief. He got in trouble s
hoplifting as a child, and then he stopped getting into trouble, not because he stopped stealing but because he stopped getting caught. He grew up to be a man who would, as they say, steal a hot stove, and he’d have it sold before it cooled off. He was the same age as Alan Walker, and they’d dropped out of school together. Eddie lived alone, and was positively gifted when it came to picking up women. He was neither good-looking nor charming, but he was evidently seductive, and women kept taking him home. But they didn’t keep him—his relationships never lasted, which was fine as far as he was concerned.
Mike Dunn was older than the others, and had actually qualified as a schoolteacher. He got unqualified in a hurry when he was caught in bed with one of his students. It was a long ways from pedophilia—he was only twenty-six himself at the time, and the girl was almost sixteen and almost as experienced sexually as he was—but that was the end of his teaching career. He drifted some, and the Walkers used him as a lookout in a drugstore break-in, and found out they liked working with him. He had a good mind, and he wound up doing a lot of the planning. When he wasn’t working he was pretty much a loner, living in a rented house on the edge of town, and having affairs with unavailable women—generally the wives or daughters of other men.
The Walkers and their associates had a lot of different ways to make money, together or separately. George and Alan always had some money on the street, loans to people whose only collateral was fear. Louis Creamer did their collection work, and provided security at the card and dice games Eddie O’Day ran. George Walker owned a bar and grill, and sold more booze there than he bought from the wholesalers; he bought from bootleggers and hijacked the occasional truck to make up the difference. We knew a lot of what they were doing, but knowing and making a case aren’t necessarily the same thing. We arrested all of them at one time or another, for one thing or another, but we could never make anything stick. That’s not all that unusual, you know. They say crime doesn’t pay, but they’re wrong. Of course it pays. If it didn’t pay, the pros would do something else.