“We’re here, mister.”
“Where are we?” he looked around. “I told you the bank.”
“No way, buddy. You said the Borscht. Here’s the Borscht.”
“OK,” Redrick grumbled. “I must have dreamed it.”
He paid up and got out, barely able to move his heavy legs. The asphalt was steaming in the sun, and it was very hot. Redrick realized that he was soaked, that there was a bad taste in his mouth, and that his eyes were tearing. He looked around before going in. As usual at this time of day the street was deserted. Businesses weren’t open yet, and the Borscht was supposed to be closed too, but Ernest was at his post already, wiping glasses and giving dirty looks to the trio sopping up beer at the corner table. The chairs had not been removed from the other tables. An unfamiliar porter in a white jacket was mopping the floor and another was struggling with a case of beer behind Ernest. Redrick went up to the bar, put the briefcase on the bar, and said hello. Ernest muttered something that was not exactly welcoming.
“Give me a beer,” Redrick said and yawned convulsively.
Ernest slammed an empty mug on the table, grabbed a bottle from the refrigerator, opened it, and upended it over the mug. Redrick, covering his mouth with his hand, stared at Ernest’s hand. It was trembling. The bottle hit the edge of the mug several times. Redrick looked up at Ernest’s face. His heavy eyelids were lowered, his puffy mouth twisted, and his fat cheeks drooping. The porter was mopping right under Redrick’s feet, the guys in the corner were arguing loudly over the races, and the other porter with the crates backed into Ernest so hard that he reeled. The man mumbled an apology. Ernest spoke in a cramped voice.
“Did you bring it?”
“Bring what?” Redrick looked over his shoulder.
One of the guys stood up lazily and went to the door. He stopped in the doorway to light a cigarette.
“Let’s go talk,” Ernest said.
The porter with the mop was now also between Redrick and the door. A big black man, along the lines of Gutalin, but twice as broad.
“Let’s go,” Redrick said and picked up the briefcase. He didn’t feel sleepy anymore, in either eye.
He went behind the bar and squeezed past the porter with the cases of beer. The porter had apparently caught his finger. He was sucking his fingertip and watching Redrick. He was a big fellow, with a broken nose and cauliflower ears. Ernest went into the back room, and Redrick followed him, because now the three guys from the corner table were blocking the door and the porter with the mop was standing near the curtains that led to the storeroom.
In the back room Ernest stepped aside and sat on a chair by the wall. Captain Quarterblad, yellow and angry, stood up from the table. From somewhere on the left a huge UN trooper appeared, his helmet pulled down over his eyes, and quickly frisked him with his large hands. He slowed down at his right pocket and extracted the brass knuckles. He prodded Redrick in the captain’s direction. Redrick approached the table and set the briefcase in front of Captain Quarterblad.
“You bloodsucker,” he said to Ernest.
Ernest raised his eyebrows and shrugged one shoulder. It was all clear. The two porters in the doorway were smirking, and there were no other doors and the window was barred from the outside.
Captain Quarterblad, his face contorted by disgust, was digging around with both hands in the briefcase, and taking out the swag and putting in on the table: two small empties; nine batteries; various sizes of black sprays, sixteen pieces in a polyethylene package; two perfectly preserved sponges; and one jar of carbonated clay…
“Anything in your pockets?” Captain Quarterblad asked softly. “Empty them.”
“Snakes,” Redrick said. “Skunks.”
He pulled out a pack of bills and flung it on the table. They scattered.
“Aha!” the captain said. “Any more?”
“Lousy toads!” Redrick shouted and threw the second pack on the floor. “There you go. I hope you choke on it!”
“Very interesting,” the captain said calmly. “Now pick it up.”
“The hell I will,” Redrick said, putting his hands behind his back. “Your slaves will pick it up. You can pick it up yourself, for all I care.”
“Pick up the money, stalker,” Captain Quarterblad said without raising his voice, leaning his fist on the table and straining toward Redrick.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Redrick, muttering curses under his breath, crouched down, and reluctantly set about picking up the money. The porters were snickering behind his back and the UN trooper snorted gleefully.
“Don’t snort at me!” Redrick said. “You’ll lose your snot.”
He was crawling around on his hands and knees, picking up the notes one by one, moving closer and closer to the dark brass ring lying peacefully on the dusty parquet floor. He turned to get better access. He kept shouting obscenities, all the ones he could remember and ones he was making up along the way. When the moment was right, he shut up, tensed, grabbed the ring, pulled it up with all his strength, and before the opened trapdoor landed on the floor he had jumped head first into the gray cold prison of the wine cellar.
He fell on his hands, somersaulted, jumped up, and ran hunched over, seeing nothing, counting on his memory and luck, into the narrow passageway between cases of bottles, knocking them over as he went past, hearing them fall and shatter in the passage behind him. Slipping, he ran up some invisible steps, threw his body against the door with its rusty hinges, and found himself in Ernest’s garage. He was shaking and panting, there were bloody spots swimming before his eyes and his heart was beating heavily with strong jolts right in his throat, but he did not stop for a second. He ran to the far corner, and scraping his hands, tore into the mountain of garbage that hid the place where the boards had been removed from the wall. He lay down on his stomach and crawled through, hearing his jacket tear, and when he was out in the narrow courtyard he crouched down behind the garbage cans, pulled off his jacket, threw away his tie, gave himself a quick once-over, brushed off his pants, straightened up, and ran into the yard. He dove into a low smelly tunnel that led to the next courtyard. He listened for the whine of the police sirens as he ran, but there weren’t any yet, and he ran faster, scaring playing children, dodging hanging laundry, crawling through holes in rotten fences—trying to get out of the neighborhood as fast as possible, before Captain Quarterblad could cordon it off. He knew the area very well. He had played in all the yards and cellars, the abandoned laundries, and the coal cellars. He had plenty of acquaintances and even friends here, and under different circumstances he would have had no trouble in hiding out, even for a week, in the neighborhood. But he hadn’t made a daring escape from arrest under Captain Quarterblad’s very nose, adding an easy twelve months to his sentence, for that.
He was very lucky. On Seventh Street a parade of some brotherhood or other was making raucous progress down the street. Two hundred of them, just as disheveled and filthy as he was. Some looked worse, as though they had spent the evening crawling through holes in fences, spilling the contents of garbage cans on themselves, maybe after having spent the night rowdily in a coal bin. He ducked out of a doorway into the crowd, cutting across it, pushing and shoving, stepping on feet, getting an occasional fist in his face, and returning the favor, until he broke out on the other side of the street and ducked into another doorway. Just then the familiar disgusting wail of the patrol cars resounded, and the parade came to a grinding halt, folding up like an accordion. But he was in a different neighborhood now, and Captain Quarterblad had no way of knowing which one.
He approached his own
He entered his garage through the hidden passage, noiselessly lifted the old seat, carefully pulled the roll of paper from the bag in the basket, and slipped it inside his shirt. He took an old worn leather jacket from a hook, found a greasy cap in the corner, and pulled it down over his eyes. The cracks in the door let narrow rays of light with dancing dust into the gloomy garage, and kids were yelling and playing outside. As he was leaving, he heard his daughter’s voice. He put his eye against the widest crack and watched Monkey wave two balloons and run
