The Man with the Golden Arm

petticoat hangs like crazy. But I got a good record too, I never hit a mailman in my life. Never hit a conductor. Who wants a couple lousy cigars for a couple tailor-made cigarettes?’ He laughed derisively.

Then added as apologetically as though suddenly confronted by a teetotaling judge: ‘I been in five rackets, sir, but I supported my sister’s kids two years, that’s in my favor. Once I lost a hunderd-eighty in a fixed crap game, worked overtime t’ree mont’s to make it back ’n then got rolled by my best friend for a hunderd-ten. Didn’t even get downhearted, just started on that overtime slave deal again, pinchin’ them little red pennies, gettin’ back on my feet wit’ the little woman helpin’ all the way ’n never askin’ nothin’ except once a while a piece of my little pink body. Never heard her squawk once. “My little red wagon is hitched to yours, DeWitt,” she tells me, “I take the bad wit’ the good, the bitter wit’ the sweet.” So I knocked her off the back porch to learn her some sense.

‘You know where a man goes wrong? It’s on them dirty gas bills every time. I didn’t owe a dime in the world yesterday afternoon – then she sent me out to square up wit’ People Gas Light ’n Coke ’n I stopped off for a quick one ’n all I got to do now is restitute the insurance company for a four-hundred-buck plate-glass window ’r do it on the knees. “Let’s settle this out of court,” I says. “Wit’ what? ” they want to know – can you beat that? They’d been to see Gracie awready ’n found out I don’t own a dime of my own ’n now Friendlier Loans knows where I’m at too. Them dirty gas bills is a man’s downfall every time.’

‘Go back to the beginning,’ Sparrow requested politely, ‘I lost tract in the middle.’ But DeWitt was too busy hauling that little red wagon of piled-up woes to heed anyone.

‘Can they get their money back if I do a stretch?’ he asked himself with a sort of angry perplexity. ‘They won’t get penny-one that way ’n that’s where I got ’em by the old jalino. I’m goin’ to work for them plate-glass people till the insurance people is all squared up – so now all I’ll have to do is drop one of them windows now ’n then ’n I got me a steady slave deal the rest of my dirty life.

‘All I hope is that bartender don’t clunk the bucket, the cop said he got cut pretty bad when he went t’rough the glass. If he clunks it, then it’s all over. Then it’s on the knees the rest of the way ’n no Gracie, no gas bills, nothin’.

‘Bills ’n humiliations, troubles ’n degradations,’ DeWitt told himself softly, ‘’n it’s on the knees the rest of the way all the same.’

‘I’m a lost-dog finder myself,’ Sparrow informed the cabbie brightly. ‘You want to buy a Polish airedale?’ but DeWitt remained too preoccupied. ‘I try to get the fool salty at me but the fool won’t salt. Brings me cigarettes ’n says she’s still wit’ me. If she’s still wit’ me how come she fergets the matches? Are they all like that? Once I shoved her out of the cab ’n all she done was sniffle a little ’n come up lame. I should of shoved her harder. But one thing they can’t pin on me, I never hit a mailman in my life. Say, who wants to swap me a couple cigarettes for a couple lousy stogies – where’d I get these things in the first place?’

‘The same thing happened to a fellow in Pittsburgh,’ Sparrow consoled DeWitt.

‘How many in there?’ the lockup wanted to know.

‘One,’ Sparrow told him and the lockup, peering closer, recognized the punk in the dimness. ‘Oh, it’s you – the captain says any time you want to get in touch with a lawyer, just say the word.’ And moved on to ask DeWitt, sitting hoarse and limp from his night-long efforts, ‘Are you the guy was hollerin’ all night?’

‘No, sir,’ the little cabbie lied meekly, ‘I just been settin’ here waitin’ for the brother-law.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘He’s a sergeant detective wit’ the attorney’s office.’

‘What attorney?’

‘State’s attorney.’

‘Don’t give me that cheap romance. You’re a loose bum with a streak of pimp ’n if you got a brother-law he’s pimpy too. Yer whole fam’ly’s pimpy.’

The outraged cabbie rose, tore the top button off his shirt to give his throat room, squeezed his forehead forward between the bars till the temples were pinched by the steel.

‘You insultin’ my fam’ly? Awright, let’s have your number, fellow, you’re gonna be on the job as long as John was in the army ’n John wasn’t in there long. Don’t try givin’ me the business, when Big Eye Lipschultz gets here we’re puttin’ in a little beef on you to the state’s attorney ’n there goes your number. No use tryin’ to shove me around from one station to another neither – I’m the guy got friends in all of ’em, Big Eye ’n me don’t care what bond you set, Big Eye’s takin’ over this case person’lly now. Ever hear of Defamation of Character, sucker? That’s what you just done. Ever been sued for false arrest? Ever heard of the U.S.A. Constitution?’

‘I didn’t even know the fellow was sick,’ the turnkey advised DeWitt solicitously at last. ‘Could you let me know when he gets back to town?’ He turned softly away, thinking soft and killing thoughts. ‘I tawt that was the guy was hollerin’,’ he explained further up the tier, ‘I just wanted to make sure. For when he starts askin’ favors.’

‘I’ll need favors from you like I need a chop in the head with a dull ax!’ DeWitt had found his voice again all right. ‘You lead wit’ yer nose!’ Then bent his troubled forehead against his fist and his fist about the cold blue bars, brooding desperately upon the duplicity of policemen in general and Chicago cops in particular.

‘You got to know a desk man or a bailiff if you want to get out before Monday,’ Sparrow consoled him, ‘but you’re a man all the same, cabbie. You’re a victim of circumstance but you’re a man all the same.’ Sparrow laid it on heavy in the hope of getting DeWitt started on the turnkey again.

‘I’m just a nobody,’ DeWitt decided gloomily, confessing himself aloud. ‘Just a down-’n-out, hard-luck, no-good, slow-dwindling drip.’ Adding wistfully, ‘But Gracie’s a hundred per cent.’

‘That lockup wouldn’t of talked that way if there hadn’t been bars between you, champ,’ Sparrow flattered the little man as if picturing him as some oversized strongarmer not likely to be subdued by less than four patrol-loads of the city’s finest.

‘I couldn’t whip nobody, pal,’ the moody DeWitt resumed his self-denunciation like a man with a fixed idea. ‘I couldn’t battle my way out of a wet paper bag. I’m just a know-itall, know-nuttin’ jerk. A drag-ass ignoramus. A stooge. A bottom-of-the-heaper. I guess I’m the biggest bust out of the museum. Small potatoes ’n few in the hill, that’s me.’

‘Yeh,’ Sparrow agreed, ‘but he didn’t have to call you no bum. You want to buy a dog?’ Implying that a dog, any dog, was the one certain solution, in an uncertain world, to any cabbie’s troubles.

‘I couldn’t buy the lice off a sick cat,’ the cabbie answered from the very depths of self-deprecation.

‘I wouldn’t sell you one with lices,’ Sparrow assured him lightly. ‘I take the lices off ’n sell them sep’rate.’

‘I wouldn’t buy one wit’out no licenses.’ De Witt’s confusion grew.

Then down the dusty jailhouse hours Sparrow stood watching the long light rise and spread, shift slowly when the noon chow cart tinkled and ebb drowsily down, like feathered hours, upon the sleeping strays. All through that brief December day the castoffs and the outlaws slept, rebels and wrecks and heartbroken bummies, cell after cell and tier upon tier, wakened only by the weary chow cart’s call or the sudden clanging of a cell door upon some forenoon coneroo, afternoon penny matcher or early evening lush arguing fiercely while being locked up for cooling off.

Watched and remembered Frankie Machine and the arm that always held up. Remembered in the evening light, when cards are boxed and cues are racked, straight up and down like the all-night hours with the hot rush hours past. Remembered that golden arm.

Till he saw how Bednar would beat it at last.

Pokey came past dragging a drunk by the scruff of the neck and the toes turned toward the ceiling: he bounced by wearing a smile of serenest peace, as if fancying he were riding in a cab while his heels scuffed stone and his arms dangled like a puppet’s on broken strings. Pokey held him with one ham of a hand while opening the next cell with the other.

Sparrow heard the body land like a sack, Pokey’s twin cats tiptoed up to see whether they’d surveyed this particular abomination before and nodded to each other judicially: ‘It’s him again all right’ – and tiptoed tastefully out of sight.

‘Cats are all stooges anyhow,’ Sparrow felt an old preference, ‘a dog’ll never squeal on a pal’ – as his own predicament began breaking in on him at last.