The Man with the Golden Arm
When they gathered the cards off the floor at last and took them away in a neat little box she said in a whisper, for she knew then she had won: ‘The wind is blowing the flies away. God has forgotten us all.’
Nor ever asked again for anything more but a sense of a white-washed stillness about her rising each day higher and more white.
The everlasting walls of Nowhere Land, higher than any hospital wall.
From which is no returning.
The wind had blown the summer flies away. God had forgotten His own.
As soon as he got the shoe off he pried at the naked heel with a razor blade to get at the lead in the flesh. But the blood began again, the wrist went weak as water and he lay back with the blood-smeared paw across his forehead and the naked foot resting upon the crumpled tabloids with the pain beating straight through the morning line to the unclean cover on which he lay. He felt the blood drying on the dated headline under his ankle.
Once he got up, fetched a scrap of soap off the washstand and began rubbing it across the ankle to get the blood off. But the light was too strong and he fell back on the bed with his checkered cap doubled under his head for a pillow, still clutching the sliver of soap in his hand. He wished that somebody would make the light stop swinging or shade it.
A red paper poppy clung to the chicken wire directly overhead and he couldn’t remember tying it there at all. ‘Must of been drunk again last night,’ he decided vaguely. Unless that Peter had tied it there. He must still be drunk, he needed a drink so bad, a drink of anything at all and all the way down. His throat felt like that left foot looked – smeared with something dark, stale and brown. Something that had to be washed off and not a blessed drop for throat, foot, or tongue. ‘Fightin’ again,’ he decided about the blood. ‘Who was I battlin’ this time?’
He sat up suddenly. What was he doing here lying flat on his pratt when there was so much to be done? It was late, it was almost too late, there was just time left to pull back the last open chair and say, ‘Deal me in.’
It was blackjack and the dealer’s eyeshade was pulled down too far over the eyes just as he had always liked to wear the shade himself; while the sucker to whom he dealt wore his own checkered cap. He stood aside and watched them both. He was both sucker and dealer; yet felt he cared nothing for what happened to either. Under the night light’s feral glare a single soiled silver dollar lay stained with his own wet blood.
‘If I win that buck they’ll find out I killed some guy,’ the sucker realized as the dealer flipped him the ace of diamonds. The dealer was laughing behind the eyeshade and around the board many Bednars smiled behind their cards; each holding them before his mouth so that no sucker might guess they were on to the dealer’s game: to stick the sucker with the bad-luck buck that meant one to twenty and maybe life.
‘Don’t take everything you can get,’ Molly-O told him ever so softly from just the other side of the wall and the girl knew what she was saying all right because the bad-luck buck lengthened under the light into a glistening new hypo with two full caps beside it. About the board, behind their cards, all those sly fat Bednars smiled: they hadn’t come here to play blackjack at all.
They had come to watch Frankie Machine take the one big fix and someone began pumping his arm to get the slow blood moving. He wakened with the desk clerk tugging at his wrist. ‘What’s wrong in here?’ he wanted to know right away. ‘Where’d you get hurt?’
‘I stepped on a nail is all.’ Frankie grinned weakly through the smear of blood across his cheek. ‘I’m not the kind makes trouble, Doc,’ he pleaded feebly. ‘Can I get a drink of water?’
But there was nobody there any more and he could not tell whether he had really seen or merely imagined the clerk. It made no difference, he had to get up and phone Antek to come and get him. Antek would get here in no time at all to help him downstairs into the car so there wasn’t any use worrying, everything was as good as done, he’d just float on his back a minute to let all the little waves wash him clean. The sun hurt his eyes, he was getting too far out, he could hardly see the beach for the glare. He sat up shaking his head to clear it.
About the bulb a little rainbow-colored halo burned, the bulb swinging a bit in its colored shell as though someone had been in here and set it swinging again while he’d floated off. He mustn’t float off again that way, he had to hold on. Hold on hard and figure out how much time he had. What was it the fellow had asked: ‘How did you get hurt?’ He sat up with sweat ringing his throat, it slid like the beads of a rosary about his neck when he turned his head; and wished to Christ the bulb would stop its endless swinging. It hurt his eyes yet he had to follow its tiny arc. There was something about it he needed to understand and slowly he saw it: framed within that rainbow-colored halo Frantic McGantic looked down with gentle mockery in his eyes.
Sergeant McGantic had come to call and the sergeant brought his own small mercies. The sergeant wasn’t one to let a good junkie down. Frankie’s eyes went seeking about the room to see what the sergeant had brought him and found it at last. It didn’t make any real difference now that there was no hypo to this fix at all.
It was enough that the sergeant had tossed, across the bedpost and in a reach of a good junkie’s hand, one thin double strand of yellow newspaper twine.
Leaning upon one elbow, there on the bed soiled by sweat and blood, Frankie asked himself aloud, squinting at the brassy glint of the bedpost beneath that swinging bulb, ‘What am I waitin’ for?’ For the roll of the squadrol’s tires? For the ice in the blood to reach the heart? Or for the tread of heavy boots following a flashlight up the stairs?
‘I hope Molly-O stays clear of John after she does her time,’ he made a bit of a prayer for Molly – but there was even less time for praying than for hoping. He got off the bed, favoring the naked left foot, and supported himself against the brass of the bedpost: he felt the chill that years of flophouse nights had trapped in the metal like the chill trapped deep in his own bones. Who was it had told him, ‘That’s the other side of the wall – it’s worse there when it’s still’?
One flight below a Madison Street trolley charged past in a streamlined, cat-howling fury that left him strengthened by an odd excitement. Before the trolley’s scream had died he had the double strand in his hands and his fingers working on it as surely and steadily as if making paper jazzbows for Solly Saltskin out of yesterday’s Form.
‘It’s all in the wrist ’n I got the touch,’ he told himself in a surge of ice-cold confidence and far, so far it told him he was still seconds ahead of them all, the siren’s first metallic cry fluttered the shade, whimpering faintly along the chicken wire and then a bit louder till it was a moaning telegraphic code shaking a wavering message across the waves of the brain – ‘Have a good dream you’re dancin’, Zosh’ – and the words were whirled like leaves in a dead-cold wind blowing up from the other side of the wall. Into one brief strangled whimpering.
To rustle away down the last dark wall of all.
Witness Sheet
STATE OF ILLINOIS)
COUNTY OF COOK)
BEFORE THE CORONER OF COOK COUNTY
INQUEST ON THE BODY )
OF ) FIRST AND FINAL
FRANCIS MAJCINEK ) HEARING
Transcript of the testimony taken and the proceedings had at an inquest held upon the body of the above-named deceased, before WILLIAM HACKETT, a DEPUTY CORONER OF COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS, and a jury, duly impaneled and sworn, at 199 N. Ashland Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, April 1, 1948. At the hour of 3 P.M.
LORRAINE REPORTING SERVICE
R. Jackson, stenographer.
The first witness, having been duly sworn, was then examined by Deputy Coroner Hackett and testified as follows:
Q. What is your name and occupation?
A. Anthony Witwicki. Tavernkeeper.
Q. What was the full name of the deceased?
A. Frankie – that is Francis, I think – Majcinek the right name – Frankie Machine, how people say.
/> Q. His address?
A. Same as mine only upstairs.
Q. His age?
A. Thirty, thirty-one, around there.
Q. Was he married or single?
A. He was married, his wife is invalid that happened one night he got drunk—
Q. Where was he born?
A. Why, right there on Division, he had a secondhand car that time, I forget the make—
Q. Where was his father born?
A. Poland same as mine. Both dead a long time now.
Q. And his mother?
A. That was a stepmother, he called it ‘foster mother’ – they got along all right. She is married again, went away, I don’t know where. He never spoke of this, that was forgotten.
Q. What kind of work did he do?
A. When he come to see me he had no work.
Q. Before that. Before he went and got into all this trouble with the police.
A. He was in jail a little now and then. Nothing serious.
Q. Before he was in jail, did he work for you?
A. No, no, he did one thing. Dealt cards. Made pretty good when he worked. Sometimes he couldn’t work every night though, how those things are.
Q. What other work did you know him to do in the past?
A. When he was a boy one summer he was a caddy, every day, the whole summer. We went together, I think they called the course Indian Hill, something like that. Once when he owed me for drinks he fixed the furnace. He could work good but not every day, he got restless then and start to drink. When he don’t work, then he don’t drink so much.
Q. Did he always drink, before all this trouble?
A. Sometimes he was a heavy drinker, then for a while he don’t drink at all, like he’s thinkin’ about somethin’. Then if he got drunk it would be awhile before he begin again. A week, maybe two weeks with hardly a drink. Just a beer or two.
Q. Does he owe you money now?
A. Nothing, nothing.
Q. When did you last see him?
A. Yesterday in the morning, I just opened up and there he was waiting, I didn’t know who it was one minute, he didn’t say. Just standing there saying nothing in the dark. I said, ‘Who’s there?’ and he says then, ‘You alone, Owner?’ When I go up to him I see. He looks like chicken with the soup out. He looks like just out of hospital.
Q. You knew the police had been looking for him. You knew it was your duty to call the police right then.
A. Nothing I knew. All I know is sometimes he is in jail a little, what for isn’t my business. I knew he was in some trouble but I don’t ask about such things, I don’t mix in politics. I just serve whisky and beer.
Q. Did he tell you he wished he were dead, that he wanted to die, that sort of thing?
A. No, no, no. That one never talked like that. Never. All he talked was he’s going to work for Gene Krupa, play ‘hot drums’ he calls it someplace downtown – then he laughs, he don’t really think so, he just like to hear how it sounds when he talks big like that.
Q. Was he nervous during this last conversation?
A. Never nervous. Just don’t feel good, too much domestic trouble, too many bills, too much beer, that’s all.
Q. Did you know of him taking anything more stimulating than beer?
A. Whisky. That’s all. Whisky.
DEPUTY: Line 16. That’s right, the full name. Your address right below it. Thank you. Next witness.
The second witness, having been duly sworn, was then examined by Deputy Coroner Hackett and testified as follows:
DEPUTY: What is your name, Sergeant?
OFFICER: L. H. Fallon.
Q. Were you the officer who found the deceased?
A. That’s right. Myself and Officer Otto Schaeffer. A bit after midnight it was.
Q. And that was at?
A. 1179 W. Madison Street, a small hotel there, we got the call on Sangamon and Adams – this is the gentleman here who called, he’d gone up to see what this fellow was hollering about.
CLERK: I went up there the first time and saw he’d been hurt some way, so I went back down to the phone and while I was phoning I heard something else and ran right back up. I couldn’t get in the door, we don’t have keys but he’d put something up against the knob. I jumped up and looked down through the top – we have that chicken-wire top like according to the Board of Health it’s permitted and I seen him hanging but I couldn’t cut him down, I couldn’t get inside. I figure this ain’t my job now it’s up to the officers – I work in this place almost three months now and it’s the first time anything like this happened except once, my first week. As soon as this man come in it seemed to me—
DEPUTY: Let the officer tell what he found.
OFFICER FALLON: When we broke in the door the deceased had fallen, the wire had given way – the wire he’d hooked the rope onto but the rope was still around his throat, it was soaped, there was still a bit of soap in his hand. He was up against the bed, huddled there like, he must have hit the bedpost with his forehead when the wire gave, it was bruised there where he hit it and tore the sleeve of his jacket. The knees were bent – like under him and the head hung on one side, toward the shoulder.
DEPUTY: Was he fully clothed?
OFFICER: Fully clothed, except for one shoe, he just had the right one on. The heel of the foot without a shoe had been torn by a.38-caliber shell. We removed him to the Polish-American Hospital where he was identified as the man who escaped them earlier in the day. There was a murder warrant out on him. He was pronounced dead by Dr Blue and removed to the County Morgue.
Q. How was he dressed when you found him?
A. He was wearing army clothes, mostly. A combat jacket, suntans, army shirt dyed green, army brogans.
Q. Were there any valuables?
A. A few dimes in one pocket. No papers. A good-conduct medal in his wallet.
DEPUTY: Line 17, Sergeant. Thank you. Next witness.
The third witness, having been duly sworn, was then examined by Deputy Coroner Hackett and testified as follows:
Q. You’re the young woman being held in connection with the death of Francis Majcinek?
A. That’s right.
Q. When did you last see the deceased?
A. Around one, maybe two o’clock yesterday.
Q. Where was this at?
A. The house on Maypole Street where the police came.
Q. What is that? A hotel?
A. Rooming house.
Q. You lived there with the deceased?
A. Since winter.
Q. I see. Did you get along well together?
A. Very well. No trouble at all.
Q. What was the matter with him?
A. Just worried all the time, no work, sorry for things he’d done, blaming himself, all like that.
Q. What I mean is, weren’t there other things – bad habits he’d picked up depressing him?
A. Drinking, that was his one bad habit.
Q. Did you ever hear him threaten to commit suicide?
A. Never. Not once. Oh well, he used to like to say things, but it didn’t mean anything.
Q. Tell us what you mean.
A. Just swing talk like musicians use. He liked to say ‘Some cats swing like that.’ Then he’d laugh, just a saying he had, it didn’t mean anything.
Q. Did you know he was wanted for murder?
A. He never told me that.
Q. But did you know it?
A. Nobody told me that.
Q. I see. And you just met him recently?
A. I know Frankie ten years. We went together before he got married.
Q. Do you understand the charge against you?
A. They haven’t told me yet.
Q. It’s called ‘Accessory after the Fact,’ that’s very serious, you will have to go to jail if you’re found guilty.
A. Are you trying me here, Coroner? If not I’d rather let the lawyers decide in court.
DEPUTY: Thank you. Line 18. Just write ‘no address.’
The statement of the coroner’s physician is as follows: ‘In my opinion death was due to asphyxiation by strangulation.’ Is there any reason why this inquest shouldn’t be closed? (No response.)
DEPUTY: Let the record show no response. The verdict of the coroner’s jury will read that the deceased came to his death from asphyxiation by strangulation, with a rope around his neck extended from a wire roofing put on with his own hands with suicidal intent, at the above-mentioned location between midnight of March 31st, 1948, and 12:20 A.M. of April 1st while temporarily insane. Close the case.
Epitaph: The Man with the Golden Arm
It’s all in the wrist, with a deck or a cue,
And Frankie Machine had the touch.
He had the touch, and a golden arm——
‘Hold up, Arm,’ he would plead,
Kissing his rosary once for help
With the faders sweating it out and——
Zing! – there it was – Little Joe or Eighter from Decatur,
Double trey the hard way, dice be nice,
When you get a hunch bet a bunch,
It don’t mean a thing if it don’t cross that string,
Make me five to keep me alive,
Tell ’em where you got it ’n how easy it was——
We remember Frankie Machine
And the arm that always held up.
We remember in the morning light
When the cards are boxed and the long cues racked
Straight up and down like the all-night hours
With the hot rush hours past.
For it’s all in the wrist with a deck or a cue
And if he crapped out when we thought he was due
It must have been that the dice were rolled,
For he had the touch, and his arm was gold:
Rack up his cue, leave the steerer his hat,