Studs Lonigan (87 page)

Studs wished Joey had bumped McKee off then and there. No use taking chances. Joey might be shot. But no, the hero in movies always pulled through. Still, this was a different picture. Joey would come through, he and the blonde would get lined up, and it would end hotsy totsy. But no, he'd read about the picture in the papers, and if he remembered it right, Joey got shot. He didn't want Joey to get shot.

The reception, Joey at the head of the table as gangland's acknowledged leader. Joey Studs Lonigan Gallagher laughing loudly as Spike jabbed his fork into a mug's elbow for taking up so much room. Charlie Chaplin had pulled that in
Shanghaied.
He'd seen it as a kid, but it was still funny. Joey leaving the reception with the blonde, her apartment, staying for the night. Laying her. Such a woman! Daddy! Sloane again. Just a friendly call. Hadn't seen anyone who knew about the murder of Greasy Jones and Lefty Loomis. No, just a friendly call, and he'd be seeing Gallagher at the D. A.'s office one of these days. Why didn't Joey get out of the racket now that he had dough, a woman, and he could pull through. The mother reading of Joey as gangland's chief, crying, the brother soothing her. Life was tough on mothers, but then, they just didn't understand. The tightening net of evidence. The blonde squealing, ought to have her puss slapped, couldn't trust that kind of a whoring bitch. Getting near the finish, and Jesus, he wanted Joey to come through it. Joey, unsuspecting, pointing to the advertising sign. . . .

Joey Gallagher again fading, in the mind of Studs Lonigan, into Studs Lonigan. Studs Lonigan, the world is yours. Take it. Oh, Christ, why hadn't he had an exciting life like Joey Gallagher? It happened to some people. Look at Al Capone. Joey Gallagher escaping from dicks, over roofs, leaving town on a freight. Would he pick up somewheres, meet a decent girl, as in most movies, would he come back? Sinking lower and lower, living in a flop house, hanging around a poolroom. Hearing these cheap pikers talk about the man hunt for Joey Gallagher, and one of them reading Sloane's statement in the paper.

“Gallagher is yellow.”

Gallagher meant business now. But it was dumb. Grabbing a freight back to show if he was yellow. Hell, he wouldn't have done that. Meant the hot seat. But that was guts, guts. Gallagher telephoning Sloane. Sloane tracing the call. Cars on wet streets. Studs wished now, hoped, told himself, Christ, Gallagher couldn't die. The cars. Gallagher rushing into the trap. Shot dead. He couldn't be dead, and they were taking him home to his broken-hearted mother. The brother and Mr. Kennedy comforting her, and the corpse of Joey Gallagher. Dead. Death. He would die, too, some day, maybe not a hero's death like Gallagher. But hell, it wasn't worth it. Doomed victory. But he would die. Why hadn't the picture ended differently, and he could think of how Joey Gallagher could go on in life, going up and up, meeting a dame hotter than the stool pigeon of a blonde, go on and up like he wanted to himself. Dead. Like a part of himself dying.

Walking out of the show, he told himself that, hell, it had only been a picture. Still, why couldn't it have ended differently? They didn't have to kill off Joey Gallagher. He was gloomy.

DROPPING into his father's overstuffed chair in the parlor, Studs asked himself if he had been a sucker. He lit a cigarette. Determined hopes forced themselves into his mind, and he expressed them by slapping his thighs and clenching and unclenching his fists. He viewed himself as a gambler, a chance-taking fool, prepared to face the risk of losing all the money he had saved for years and to drop it with a game smile on his face. Ashes slipped from his burning cigarette. Disinclined to arise and get an ash tray, he carelessly rubbed them off his trousers. He hoped that the cigarette wouldn't burn too rapidly and cause more dropping ashes. He cast a drifting glance at the gray of the expiring day. And he heard the muffled shouts of boys at play.

He looked across the room at the crumpled copy of the morning paper. He hadn't understood clearly the meaning of the news account of yesterday's stock market, but it had fallen. His stock, though, had just slipped one point, and meant a loss so far of only eighty dollars. It could easily come back if today's market was better. He recalled how enthusiastically Ike Dugan had talked to him about the stocks. They were backed by all of the Imbray holdings and public utilities, and directed by the brain of a man like Solomon Imbray, and you couldn't go wrong on such stock. Jesus, he hoped the guy was right. But there was something snaky about that guy, and. . . .

The cigarette stub burned his lips, more ashes falling as he arose to squash it in an ash tray. Hell, you never got anywhere unless you took a chance, and that was Studs Lonigan all over, he counselled himself.

He looked at himself in the wall mirror. Guessed he was looking better. But his cheeks were still thin, not a lot of color in them. When he'd been beefier, he hadn't seemed to himself to be so small, but now, he looked pretty much like a weak little runt. He told himself to cancel this stuff. He imagined meeting Stan Simonsky or some other friend, and casually telling them how he had taken this flyer in Imbray stock, talking as if it were nothing more than risking a few shekels in a crap game.

And when his investment rose, he'd sell, bank his original capital, use the profits to play on other stocks. All these years he'd been so dumb he hadn't thought of making money this way. Other guys had cleaned up doing it, and he had been just too dumb to know it. Well, it still wasn't too late, and he'd be worth a hell of a lot more than Red Kelly ever would be, and it wouldn't be long, either. And what a nice little nest egg they'd have for their marriage.

He flung himself back into the chair, imagining himself and Catherine married, getting along as well as, better than, Phil Rolfe and Fritzie. Yessir, Studs Lonigan was going to be up in the bucks, way up.

He got up, nervous, and stood by the window, watching kids chase each other about the weedy vacant lot across the street, bang-banging and dueling with sticks of wood. Wouldn't they like to have what those Italian kids had that he'd seen in the movies about two weeks ago? Wooden guns, trenches, regular imitation war. And maybe Mussolini was smart, all right. It might be good for this country to give kids the same thing, training them, because when they grew up, if they were needed for war to repel a foreign invader like the Japs or the Russian Reds, they'd not go into it green.

“William, come and have a glass of milk,” his mother called, and he turned from the window, grateful for the distraction.

He passed through the dark, narrow hallway and planked himself down at the enamel-topped kitchen table. He munched a graham cracker and slowly sipped milk.

“Your father will be coming home early,” she said, a gray-haired woman with fatigue indelibly printed into her gaunt face.

“Dad seems to be in the dumps a lot these days,” Studs said, grinding on a new cracker, glancing at her as she sat by the sink peeling potatoes.

“It's a downright shame that he should come to all this trouble and worry in his old age, after being such a good man and a good provider for his family all these years,” she muttered.

Tough, all right. But Studs Lonigan was not going to let himself get it in the neck the same way, he thought confidently.

“The Trents downstairs only paid half of their rent this month, and Mr. Trent's salary has been cut. They're complaining that the rent's too high. And how can your father reduce it, with his expenses, the upkeep on the building, his taxes, and the mortgage payments he has to make. The O‘Connells, too, on the third floor, haven't paid a cent of rent in three months. Your father hates to ask Mr. O'Connell to leave, because Mr. O'Connell is a good steady man who always paid his rent right on the dot. But with his store failing, poor man, he's lost everything he had. And I was talking with Mrs. Schwartz down on the first floor this morning, and she was telling me how with their new car half paid for, they couldn't keep it up, and the car was taken away from them.”

“Yes, it's tough all around,” Studs mumbled, but if his stock only went right, it wouldn't be hitting him in the solar plexus. But had he, had he, after all, been a first-class chump?

“Times are harder than I can ever remember them. If they get any worse, I don't know what's going to happen to us. And I'd rather die than have to ask anything of my girls or their husbands. I don't know what I'd do but for my faith in God and in the power of The Little Rose of Christ. I pray to her every day for comfort, and for your father, and our family.” Looking up, she arose, walked to the table, poured him a second glass of milk and said, “Here, William, drink another glass. It's good for you.”

“I've had plenty,” he said, rocking back on his chair.

“Drink it, William. It will build you up.”

“I'm all right. I feel fine.”

“No, William, you're so thin and pale I always worry about you. You must drink more milk and build yourself up. If anything ever happened to your father, you know, you'd be the head of the family.”

“Dad's been hoping to get a contract to decorate an apartment hotel by the lake. If he does, I'll be able to go to work on it, and things will be much rosier for us all around,” Studs said, taking a gulp of milk.

“I hope to the Lord he does. But William, I just dread to think of you going out to do all that hard work in your health.”

“I'll be all right.”

“But the Lord knows you'll have to work when you're married. This isn't the best time in the world for young folks to be getting engaged and married,” she said, her voice growing faintly querulous.

Studs was tempted to tell her there would be no worry on that score if his investment came out right.

“Well, it's a comfort to know that you have money saved up in the bank and that you won't be going to her empty-handed.”

He drank his milk more slowly.

“And I'm grateful to God that my girls married good providers, and have the comforts your father and I always wanted them to have when they got married.” She sighed. “Of course, I wouldn't for the world of me say anything against a fine upstanding ambitious boy like Phillip, because he is very good to my daughter, but I do wish he could get into a better business. He's too smart a boy to be doing what he does.”

“He's making a go of it,” Studs said.

Some day Phil Rolfe was going to be a piker alongside of Studs Lonigan!

“He's a fine boy. He lives up to the faith, too, better than many of them that's been born in it. And I so often think what a shame it is that he's a gambler.”

“He doesn't do the gambling. He's got the law of averages on his side.”

“It would be so much nicer, and Loretta would have so much more . . . more standing with the right kind of people, if he was in something else, real estate, insurance, bonds.”

“What could anybody do in real estate these days? Look at us with our building, and what dad says about nearly all the big hotels and buildings being busted and in the hands of receivers. There's more money today in running a race-track book, like Phil does, than in such rackets.”

“I know, but there must be something else besides gambling for a boy with as educated a girl as Loretta for his wife,” she said wistfully.

“He's making good,” Studs said, yawning, getting up. “I guess I'll go take a nap.”

“Yes, do, son, it will be good for you,” she said, peeling away at the potatoes.

“Well, dad,” Studs said, looking to his left at his father who sat at the head of the supper table, “I'm getting to feel pretty good these days.”

“That's fine, Bill,” Lonigan said, the worried absorption seeming to lift from his ruddy face. “And I'm only sorry that I won't be able to be giving you as much steady work to do as I used to. The deal on that apartment hotel job flopped. The fellow who was going to supply the fresh capital got cold feet. So we don't get our contract, and it's going to put quite a crimp in our style. I had counted a lot on getting it.”

“That's a shame, Patrick. But you mustn't worry. The Lord will provide for his own,” Mrs. Lonigan said.

“I hope so,” Lonigan said lifelessly, applying a knife and fork to his pork chop.

“Things will have to get better. That's just what Mrs. Schwartz and I were saying to each other in the hall this morning,” she said.

“Maybe if we get a man in like Al Smith next year, and kick out Hoover who's only a tool of the Jew international bankers, we'll turn the comer. This country is too great and too rich to be going to the dogs the way it seems to be these days. And you know, I was speaking to a fellow today who seems to know what he's talking about, and that's just what he was saying. But we got to get a strong man in the White House, a man like Al Smith or Mussolini, to kick out the bankers and grafting politicians and racketeers, and that'll make America a country for Americans only. If we don't do that, we give arguments right into the hands of the Reds who want anarchy here like they got in Russia,” Lonigan said, and Studs nodded.

“Oh, Patrick, I meant to tell you, Frances telephoned today, and they're getting a new automobile.”

“Fine! Fine! I'm glad to hear it,” he listlessly said with a mouthful of food.

“What kind?” asked Martin, a tall, thin and gawky young man in his early twenties.

“She told me the make, but I forget it now. You know, it's such a comfort to know that Carroll and Phillip are so good to my girls. Only it would be so much nicer if Phillip could get into a more refined business.”