showed me his neat teeth—and they looked dirty, too. And he was the character who always carried a little can of tooth powder, insisted on rubbing his teeth clean after eating. He said, “That's not as much of a wisecrack as you seem to think, Bucky. When you spin a coin, both sides are affected. Now stop shooting off your big mouth for a moment and listen. It's on the planning level that most capers strike a reef. Punks make a lot of plans beforehand, with no way of knowing what the actual realities of the situation will be. They plan a deal to go a certain way; if it goes another, they're sunk. In the pattern of crime, plans equals mistakes. Also, plans can become known, and the more you plan the more errors you overlook. What I'm telling you is this: Without making plan one we stumbled over a million dollars. Any errors we make will come from facing the problems as they arise. I believe that with any sort of break we'll get out of this dump, then out of the country, to enjoy the money.”
“But how, Doc, how?”
He blew smoke at a roach crossing the table. “Don't be so impatient. I don't know—I just told you we haven't any set plans.”
“Damn it, we have to plan our next step!”
“Why? Sometimes it's best to stand still, not take a step. Give me time, Bucky—I'll think of an out. I always have. Here, since you're so in love with plans, here's a few precautions. We'll keep to our hidden room most of the time—less chance of anybody spotting us from the windows. Somebody rings the doorbell, we don't answer. Every night, for a half hour or so, we'll leave the kitchen light on, and the light up in her bedroom.” Doc crushed his cigarette on the table, wasting half of the butt. He stood up and yawned. “For the present our immediate steps are simple—get some sack time and stop worrying.”
As we started for our room, he told me, “Shut your eyes, Bucky. You want to be doing something, then start memorizing where the furniture is. Never know when we might have to move in the dark.”
I followed him to our room, keeping my eyes open. He closed the secret “door,” then snapped on the light. We stretched out on our cots. I picked up the paper while Doc went to sleep. But I couldn't read—the pictures of us already looked like mug shots. I dropped the paper on the floor. There were a few spots of Molly's blood. Despite stomach wounds she really hadn't bled much. Would she have tried to kill us, take the dough, like Doc said? Seemed to me she would have gone for a possible reward, blown the whistle on us.
I got up and opened the “door.” There was a tiny John next to the kitchen. If this was such a hot hide-out, why didn't they think to build a toilet in the room? I washed up—there never had been any hot water—dampened some toilet paper then soaped it up, returned to our room. I was down on my knees trying to get rid of the bloodstains when I heard Doc chuckling. He said, “When the F.B.I. shot Dillinger down in front of a theater, they say people were sopping up his blood with handkerchiefs and newspaper for souvenirs.”
I didn't bother answering. Sometimes Doc's pearls of wisdom gave me a stiff pain. I couldn't get much of the blood off and when I went back to the bathroom I tried walking in the dim light with my eyes shut. I banged my knee.
Doc was sleeping again when I closed the “door,” snapped on the light. I sat on my cot, far too tense to sleep. I didn't like the idea of going out; it frightened me silly. But Doc was right, we had to eat—right now I wanted a drag, wanted it badly—and it had to be me. I didn't want to think about going out, tried to think of
I stared at Doc's skinny back, envious of the way he could pound his ear. He wasn't asleep. He must have felt my eyes on him; he suddenly rolled over, told me, “Maybe that kid's watch of yours will come in handy after all. Wake me when it's eight o'clock. You have to leave before the stores close. I could go for a shrimp salad sandwich—on good German rye.”
Then he turned over again and really went to sleep.
I cursed him, to myself, for no reason. Stretching out on the cot, I glanced at the fighter on the watch face. The paint on his left shoe was peeling. It wasn't even seven o'clock. Crazy, how the watch upset Doc, or maybe amused him. Like Elma, he was always after me to buy a new one—had tried to give me an expensive, self-winding job.
I never told him why I had to keep wearing it. I guess I couldn't have put it in words. But I wanted to wear it. Judy never noticed it and Betty thought it was cute. Elma was mad because I... What was Elma doing now? How was she taking all this? Probably wishing she could get her mitts on me—and the money.
Elma knew about Nate giving me the watch, but she kept nagging me to throw it away. But then nagging was her way of life. Elma the lump. Would it have worked out okay if she hadn't had her insides taken out—that lousy operation?
Or was our marriage all wrong from the jump?
4—
My marriage to Elma worked out fine, at first. I did a lot of thinking about Elma while I was in Korea. She used to write me regularly, dull letters but the
It wasn't much of a worry because for a time I didn't think I was coming back. I guess I wanted to die; you know, kid stuff— felt it would spite Nate. But dead or alive, I wanted to be a big hero. Again, it might have been to prove to Nate I could make it on my own, didn't need him. I still felt nameless, and I suppose I thought if I became a hero, even a dead one, at least I'd be a
Okay, it sounds childish now, but then I considered myself the toughest thing out, and I guess I was. I was anxious to fight anybody or anything. I kept going up to sergeant and being busted back to private over some brawl. The weird part was that although I saw more than my share of combat and shooting, kept volunteering for patrols—and once I was the only guy who came back—in actual combat I never got a scratch. They gave me two Purple Hearts but both of them were phony.
There was an Italian hick from Maine I got to be kind of pals with. Perhaps because I'd considered myself an Italian for so long I couldn't stop. Most of my fist fights were over some slob making a crack about Carmen Brindise's name. Carmen was a little guy who spoke with a nasal twang, smart and tough. He knew all there was to know about hunting and fishing. In his wallet he carried fish hooks and a line and any time we were around a river, the ocean, even the damn rice paddies, he had a line over. Not that I ever saw him catch anything, either.
One night when we were resting between patrols, and supposedly in a rear area, we were sharing a pup tent. It was that cold winter when it seemed I'd never get real warm again. Carmen had made some rice wine and we were tanked up on the junk. Matter of fact, it was so freezing cold, the bottle broke and I got a nasty cut on my arm taking glass out of the rice mash. Carmen was telling me about how he used to go hunting up in Maine and Canada and on cold nights he'd stick a finger out of the tent and say, “Feels two dogs cold,” and take two hunting hounds in with him for warmth.
In the middle of the night we were high with wine and Carmen was doing his act, sticking a gloved finger out and announcing it was now “ten dogs cold.” Not that we had any dogs, you understand. The last time he did this, a rifle slug blew the top of his head off, splattering me with blood. When the medics reached us they put my bottle cut down as a wound and I got my first Purple Heart.
The second time, I was hitching a ride in a supply truck when a plane came in strafing, killing the driver. I got a bad cut on the head diving out the cab for the ground. When I came to in a base hospital I had another Purple Heart. I suppose that second one was legit.
I didn't pay much attention to the medals, but they helped me get home on rotation and by then the war was over. I figured I'd tell Elma it had been a quickie marriage, let her get a divorce. But Elma surprised me.
She had put away over a grand from my allotment checks and had been making good money working in an aircraft factory. So when I came home I found we had our own apartment, a three-room deal in a swank elevator house. The truth is, for the first couple of months I was nuts about Elma. There was a big sex business with us. She wasn't any beauty but was wonderfully curious about so many things, and we made up for the years I'd been away. It was terrific. I mean, we'd have these workouts and then in the morning she'd take off for work while I'd sleep until the middle of the afternoon, then lounge round the house, watch TV. Even the apartment was kicks then—compared to the tenement I'd known—and I'd often put in hours cleaning it up, waxing the floors, waiting for Elma to come home and make supper.
Her aircraft job folded a few months later; all the women were laid off, and Elma found an office job at half her former salary. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I took a lot of civil service exams, my being a vet giving me extra points. In the meantime we needed dough and I went from one job to another, none of them really much. I was a restless sour ball, always socking the boss or a customer. Like I became a stock clerk in a big clothing house. Might have been a good deal; some of the clerks went on to become salesmen and store managers. My boss let everybody know he'd been a Marine and when I happened to mention I had a double Purple Heart, I
