Legs

foursome-Jack, Count Duschene, Classy Willie Green, and myself-was the center of all attention. Jack was traveling under the name of John Nolan, a name of notable nautical import, and he got away with it until the radio brought news bulletins from the New York City police commissioner, a feisty old Irishman named Devane, that Jack was fleeing from a foul murder and was now on the high seas, bound for England to buy dope.

He wasn't wanted by the police, but Devane felt it his duty to alert the nations of Europe that a fiend was approaching. The Northrup car was the subject of daily bulletins in the ship's newspaper, and as the mystery of what happened to Charlie intensified, so did Jack's celebrity. Passengers snapped his picture, asked for his autograph, assured him they didn't believe such a nice person as he was would have anything to do with such terrible goings on.

The fox terrier: He appeared as I stood on the sports deck near the rail, while Jack was shooting skeet. I saw nothing chasing the dog, which came at me in a blur of brown and white, but there must have been something, for he was panicky or perhaps suddenly maddened. He took a corner at high speed, dead-ended into a bulkhead, turned around, and leaped through the rail, flailing like a crazy-legged circus clown falling off a tightrope into a net. I saw him surface once, go into a wave, bob up again, and then vanish. I doubt anyone else saw it.

A man finally came toward me at a brisk pace and asked if I'd seen his dog, and I said, yes, I'd just seen it leap overboard.

'Leap overboard?' the man said, stunned by the concept.

'Yes. He leaped.'

'He wasn't thrown?'

''Nobody threw him, I can tell you that. He jumped. '

'A dog wouldn't leap overboard like that.'

He looked at me, beginning to believe I'd killed his dog. I assured him I'd never seen such a thing either, but that it was true, and just then he looked past me and said, 'That's Legs Diamond,' the dog instantly forgotten, the man already turning to someone to pass along his discovery. In a matter of minutes a dozen people were watching Jack shoot. He had been reloading during my encounter and saw the crowd before he put the shotgun again to his shoulder. He fired, missed, fired, missed. The crowd tittered, but he looked at them and silenced the titters. He fired again, missed again, fired again, missed again, and thrust the gun angrily at the man in charge of lofting the clay pigeons. Then he and I went quickly down to the parlor where Classy Willie and The Count, a dapper pair, were jointly relieving four other passengers of their vacation money in a poker game. I knew neither The Count nor Willie before I boarded the ship with Jack, but it turned out that The Count was Jack's international associate, an expert bottom dealer who spoke French, German, and Spanish and did not lose his head in the presence of too many forks, and that Classy Willie was a card thief, specializing in ocean liners, who had been hired by Jimmy Biondo to represent him in the dope deal. Willie had a certain suavity behind his pencil-line mustache, but he was also known for his erratic violence on behalf of his employer.

I understood these relationships only much later. At this point in the trip I assumed both men worked for Jack. I asked Jack about Oxie and the car and he said, 'I take no responsibility for mugs like him once they're out of my sight.'

'Goddamn it, Jack, you've got me involved in the biggest murder case in upstate New York in Christ knows how long and you give me this evasive routine?'

'Who said you're involved? I'm not even involved.'

'You're involved. On the radio is involved.'

'Tomorrow there'll be an earthquake in Peru and they'll try to stick me with it. '

'Bullshit.'

'Shove your bullshit up your ass,' he said and walked away.

But he came back an hour later and sat down beside me in a deckchair, where I was brooding on my stupidity and reading Ernest Dimnet on how to think better, and he said, 'How's things now?'

'I'm still involved.'

'You worry a lot, Marcus. That's a bad sign. Gets you into trouble. '

'I'm in trouble now because I didn't worry enough.'

'Listen, you got nothing to be afraid of. Nobody's after your ass, nobody wants to put you on the spot. I never knew a fucking lawyer yet couldn't talk his way out of a sandstorm. You'll do all right if you don't lose your head.'

'There was blood in that car, and Oxie was with it. And Oxie is your man. '

'Somebody could've had a nosebleed. For chrissake, don't fuck me AROUND!' And he walked away from me again.

We didn't speak a direct word to each other, apart from pass the salt, for two days. My plan was to get off at Plymouth and get the next boat home. I observed him from a distance, seeing people go out of their way for a look at him playing cards in his shirtsleeves. I saw a blond librarian ask him to dance and begin a thing with him. He was a bootlegger and, as such, had celebrity status, plus permission from the social order to kill, maim, and befoul the legal system, for wasn't he performing a social mission for the masses? The system would stay healthy by having life both ways: first, relishing Jack's achievement while it served a function, then slavering sensually when his head, no longer necessary, rolled. This insight softened my hard line of Northrup. Maybe it was all a bootlegger's feud, which somehow made the consequent death okay. Let others assess the moral obliquity in this.

Jack went through a tango with the librarian, who was from Minneapolis, a fetchingly rinsed-out blonde who wore schoolmarmish tweed suits with low-cut blouses beneath. You saw the blouses only when she peeled off the top covering as the dancing went on and on. Jack invited her to eat with us when he started up with her, and he saw to it that none of us lingered over coffee.

Then one day at dinner she wasn't there. Her empty chair went unremarked upon until Jack himself gestured toward it and said, 'She wanted my autograph on her briefs,' which I thought was a quaint euphemism for Jack.

Everyone laughed at the absurdity, even me.

'I gave her a bullet,' Jack said, and I fell into uncertainty until he added, 'She says to me, 'It's the right shape but the wrong size.' And I told her, 'Use it sideways.'

We were swilling duck a l'orange when the librarian came up to the table with her jacket off and put her face inches away from Jack's.

'You turn women into swine,' she said.

Jack nodded and bit the duck.

* * *

The morning news was that the search for Charlie Northrup had turned into one of the biggest manhunts in New York State history. He was presumed dead, but where? On top of this came a cable from Jimmy Biondo to Classy Willie, precipitating an impromptu meeting of our small quartet in Jack's cabin. Willie arrived, visibly equipped with a pistol for the first time since we boarded ship. Sensing tension, I got up to leave. But Jack said stick around, and so I did.

'Jimmy wants to call off the deal,' Willie said to Jack, the first time a deal had been mentioned on the trip.

'Is that so?'

Willie handed the cable to Jack, who read it to us. 'Tell our friend we can't stay with him,' it said.

'I wonder what he's worried about'?' Jack said. Classy Willie didn't say anything.

'Do you know what he means, Willie?'

'He's talking about the money. Wants me to take it back to him.'

'Our money?'

'Jimmy figures it's his money until we make the buy.'

'Until I make the buy,' Jack said.

'You know what I mean, Jack.'

'No, Willie, I can't say that I do. You're a card thief. I never knew a card thief who could talk straight. '

'Jimmy must figure you're too hot. The radio says they won't let you into England.'

'I wasn't going to England. '