Hard Rain Falling (4 page)

Denny laughed. “Oh, man, you’re good, but you’re not that good. There’s plenty of guys up there can beat you. What’s your high run?”

“Fifty-five,” Billy said.

“Fifty-five. You ever hear of Joe Cannon? He
owns
the Rialto. You think you can beat him with your fifty-five? And not only him. How about Reuben Menashe? Bobby Case? Bobby’s only about fourteen but he can wipe your ass. He went down to Frisco about a month ago and made eighteen hundred playin nine-ball at Corcoran’s, and they were
spottin
him the seven eight cause he’s so young-lookin. Can you beat these guys? You better stick to snooker. They got a bunch of snooker fiends up there that think they run the world; it’d take em a month to decide you were too goo for em, and by then you’d have all the money.”

“I don’t want to play no snooker,” Billy said. He did not know why; there was something in his mind about being the best, but he did not want to face that. Because, he thought, it’s not the truth. I don’t want to be the best. I aint the best. I’ll never be the best. But he did not want to play snooker, take the sucker’s money, while all the time the really good players were laughing at him. As a matter of fact, he had forgotten all about Joe Cannon; he could not understand why. Everybody knew about him. He was a really good player, and one of the few who had made money at the game, enough to buy his own pool-hall and cardroom. The very thought of playing him frightened Billy; he knew his hands would feel heavy, the cue foreign to his grip, the balls distant. And Joe Cannon wasn’t even the best. He was just the best in the Pacific Northwest, and already people were saying he was getting too old, spending too much time playing poker, and his stroke was way off lately. Yet Billy was afraid to play him. I’m only
sixteen
, he told himself angrily.
What’s all the fuss?

“How do I find this Rialto?” he asked Denny.

“Let’s go,” Denny said. “I’ll take you up there. I wanna hamburger anyhow. They aint got hamburgers in this joint.” He called out, “Hey, Levitt, I’m goin up to the other joint.”

Jack hardly looked up. He was beginning to feel desperate; he had played and played, and all he did was lose his money. This morning he had left his hotel for breakfast, and returned to find a padlock on his door. He knew that he would not be able to get his stuff out of the room until he had paid the fifty-odd dollars he owed, but instead of sitting down and planning what to do, he had gotten into a game of pool. He wondered now why he was so stupid. He missed an easy shot, and swore angrily, throwing his cue down on the floor. John the houseman came up to him and said, “Don’t bust the equipment, sonny.”

“Aw hell, I quit,” Jack said. “How about puttin my time on the wire?”

John looked at him carefully, and said, “Okay. One time.”

Jack grinned. “How do you know I’ll pay?”

“Shee. You’ll pay. You got to, or you don’t get to hang out in here.”

Still grinning, Jack shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, I guess you got me by the balls.”

“I guess so.”

Jack went back outside. It was drizzling slightly, and the cold moisture felt good on his face. He walked up toward the Corner, up Sixth Avenue, and stopped once in a record store to listen to some new Stan Kenton. It was one of the things you could do if you didn’t have any money. But it got boring, finally, and he went on. Everything seemed out of kilter. It hadn’t been like this at the orphanage; there you had something you were supposed to be doing all the time. He hadn’t expected to miss that. But he did. He had to admit it. He went past the Orpheum Theater on Broadway. A war picture was showing, and he wondered if he wanted to see it. He knew a way to get in without paying; you went up to the guy taking tickets and said, “I’m supposed to pick up my kid sister,” and just walked past him. If he had any guts he’d throw you out, but most of them didn’t. A couple of weeks before, Jack and about seven others who had been hanging around the Corner bored and broke had busted into the United Artists by running single-file past the ticket-taker without saying a word, running up the stairs to the balcony and then splitting up and taking seats. None of them had been caught, and later, in the middle of the picture, Denny, sitting down in the front of the balcony, yelled, “Count
off!
” and Jack yelled, “One!” and somebody else, “Two!” while the usherettes ran around looking for them. It had been fun, but stupid. He did not want to see the war movie. It would be full of shit. He walked on up to the drugstore on the Corner and drank a Coke and waited for something interesting to happen.

His friend, the red-haired Denny Mellon, came into the drugstore about an hour later, and by this time Jack was almost going crazy from boredom. He was not the only member of the Broadway gang in the place, but he sat by himself anyway, to nourish his boredom; he did not like the bunch at the other end of the counter, grouped around Clancy Phipps. Clancy had just done six months in the county jail for stealing a portable radio out of a car, and everyone was listening to him be ironic and hard about life in jail. Denny sat down next to Jack and said, “Shit.”

“What’s up?”

“Oh, balls. I took this nigger kid up to the Rialto, meanin to hustle him out of all his gold. I had a great scheme goin. I was gonna get him to play snooker with Hatch and them old farts on the middle table, get his confidence all built up, you know, an then when you showed up, get him in a nine-ball game between you and somebody like Bobby Case, an cut him up. You know, you play safe, and Case shoot out. The best part is, he’d beat Hatch and them guys easy, see, and then we’d get all his gold an all their gold, too. Only, you didn’t show up an didn’t show up, and in comes Case with that crazy bastard Kol Mano, an
they
got him.”

“How much did they get off him?”

“Christ, about fifty bucks. Shee-fucking-
it!
”

Jack laughed. “It wasn’t your money.”

“It should of been.”

“So you’re broke, too.”

Denny showed his teeth in an Irish grin. “Nope. I got about ten bucks.”

“Loan me five.”

“Nope. In about ten minutes I’m gonna walk down to the Model Hotel and buy myself a nice juicy piece of ass. I been thinkin about it all day. I ain’t had a piece of ass in a week.”

“You’re a real buddy,” Jack said. Suddenly he wanted a girl, very badly. He had been to the Model and the Rex, and a couple of the other whorehouses, with Denny and alone, and right now that seemed like the most delightful thing they could do. It was so nice and businesslike, and the girls smelled so good, and seemed so attractive....

“Listen,” he said to Denny. “You got ten, we take five each and that gets us both in. You just can’t leave me sittin here.”

“Why not?” Denny grinned. “Tell you what: while I’m sittin there on the bed watchin the girl strip, I’ll
think
about you, just once. Okay?”

“You prick,” Jack said, but he knew that Denny would take him along. It was one of the things he liked about Denny. Jack could not understand why Denny was so friendly, so open and so easy with his money, when he had any, but that didn’t make any difference. It didn’t bother Jack that he would be bumming Denny’s last five dollars, either. He reasoned that if Denny didn’t want to share it, he wouldn’t. He wasn’t
forcing
him.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

“Naw, it’s too early. Let’s try to hold off. But man, I do really feel horny, don’t you?” Abruptly, he changed the subject. “That nigger kid just run away from home. Man, he shoots good pool, but he’s a fish. Anybody with larceny in his heart would of smelled a dead rat, the way them guys was cuttin him up. But he just looked more and more pissed off, and kep shootin better an better; but no use. The best fuckin stick in the world can’t beat that kind of action.”

“If somebody pulled that shit on me, I’d break their fuckin heads in,” Jack said.

“Sure you would, but what’s a little guy to do?”

“Fuck the little guys. Hey, let’s
go!
”

Denny laughed. “
Smell
that sweet pussy!” He wheeled around on the stool and stood up. “Let’s race down Broadway!” He ran out of the drugstore, and Jack followed.

They raced down the full length of Portland’s main street, dodging in among the evening crowds, bumping into not a few irate citizens. The light was red when they got to Burnside, but they ran across the street anyway, causing cars to brake sharply and drivers to blow their horns in anger and frustration. Jack, dancing through the traffic behind Denny, raised both hands in the standard gesture of contempt, his middle fingers extended. When they got to the other side and were among the skid row crowds, they slowed down to a walk, panting heavily and catching their breath. Above them, under the red clouds, two gigantic neon signs threw colored light on the wet streets: one saying JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD with a traveling scriptural message beneath it in blinking lights; the other a gigantic glass being filled with beer from a gigantic tap, all in blinking lights: BLITZ-WEINHARD BEER.

The Model Hotel was on the corner of Sixth and Couch Streets, above a grocery store, and had two entrances. The boys ran up the stairs leading from the unlighted side entrance, and even before they got to the top they could smell the strange, exciting woman-perfume smell of the whorehouse.

“Oh, boy!” Denny said. He grinned at Jack eagerly, and Jack’s manly pose, just assumed, collapsed in giggles.

The maid came around the corner of the corridor and smiled at them and said, “Evenin, boys. Is you of age?”

“I’m thirty-six,” Denny said.

“I’m forty-two,” Jack said.

The maid laughed and led them down the corridor to the waiting room.

Less than an hour later, they were standing on the corner of Sixth and Burnside, wondering what to do with themselves. They had spent all their money, compared girls, and exhausted the subject of sex entirely. Now Jack was feeling restless and irritated with himself for no reason, and wondering what he was going to do for scuffle money. Without any particular destination in mind, they began walking up Burnside, toward the stadium area. Denny was silent as they walked, but Jack could not keep his thoughts to himself.

“God damn it, I need
gold
. We got to figure out some way of gettin some gold. It’s not even eight
o’clock
, for Christ’s sake.”

“What’er you so pissed about? I’m broke, too.”

“Yeah, but you can always go home and get eats and a bed. I’m out in the stony, man.”

Denny put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Lissen, you can sack out at my place for a couple days. I told you that before.”

“
Fuck it!
I want money!”

They stopped walking. They were in a section of automobile showrooms and deserted used-car lots. Jack was wishing desperately that some fool citizen would come along so Jack could smash him, drag him in back of the used cars, and take his money. But there were no citizens around. There weren’t even very many cars going by.

He looked at the used-car lot. In the back there was a small white shack with a night light showing through the window in the door.

“Let’s bust in there and see if they left any gold around,” he said to Denny.

Denny looked surprised. “Okay,” he said. He followed Jack across the gravel of the lot and watched as Jack picked up a rag, wrapped it around his fist and punched the glass in the door. Jack reached through and opened the door from the inside, and they both stepped in, Denny throwing one glance back at the street.

There were two desks with barely room to get between them, papers all over the tops; a few calendars on the walls, and a large rack with keys on nails. Jack started going through the drawers of one desk, and after a moment’s hesitation, Denny started in on the other. All they found were blank forms, messy files of completed loan applications and title changes, and half an apple, which Denny threw in the wastebasket.

“Shit,” he said. “We left fingerprints all over the goddam place.”

“So what? Nobody’s got my prints. They got yours?”

“Hell no. Fuck it. No money. Let’s get out of here.”

“You scared?”

“Course I’m scared, you nut. Let’s go.”

Jack was looking at the board of keys. “Let’s take one of their goddam cars and race hell out of it.”

They took the keys to a 1946 Cadillac, found the car, and drove it off the lot, smashing through the thin guard chain across the driveway, hearing the posts holding the chain splinter and crunch. They drove up Burnside, Jack behind the wheel. It never entered his mind that he had just committed grand theft, among other major and minor crimes. All he knew was that at last he was behind the wheel of a fine automobile, there was plenty of gas in the tank, and the evening was ahead of them. He did not think about money again for almost an hour.

After taking the Cadillac out on the highway and opening it up a few times, Jack and Denny came back to Portland, and for a while drove through the expensive curved streets of Council Crest. Driving the big, powerful car at top speeds had been terribly exciting, and now they were calming down, not talking, just looking out the windows at the rich people’s houses. The plan was to abandon the car up here and walk back down to the downtown section.

“Hey, I been in that house,” Denny said, pointing. Jack pulled the car over, and peered through the gloom. The house Denny meant was back behind a hedge and trees, and the second story, which they could see from where they were, was dark and deserted-looking.

“You remember that kid Weinfeld?” Denny asked. “This is his joint. I come up here and had
lunch
. He owed me eight bucks from snooker an we come up here to collect. God, what a mansion! You never seen anything like it. They got a room for every fuckin thing you can think of; the old man’s got his own bar, all that crap. They must be damn near millionaires.”

Jack looked up at the blank dark windows of the building, set in its framework of damp firs, beneath a roof that seemed to have a dozen chimneys. “God,” he said.

“They’re really rich bastards,” Denny said. “In fact, they’re takin a vacation in Mexico. Weinfeld come around last week askin if anybody wanted any dirty pictures or anythin.”