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  “The fuck?”

  He turned to the crate and the snake was standing there, like a black iron rod, protruding from the crate, its head at Sal’s eye level, looking at him, flicking its tongue. Sal felt something like cold electricity run through his body. Adrenaline. He had the crowbar in his hand, ready to swing. He was pointed toward the door. The snake was less than an arm’s length away. Sal knew he should do something—run, fight, dodge, scream—but what he did was nothing at all.

  The mamba struck, its fangs hooking into the side of Sal’s neck, its lower teeth fastening around his Adam’s apple while it pumped venom, a long voyage’s worth of stored-up venom, into Sal’s bloodstream, at which point Sal did all the things he had thought of doing an instant before. He swung the crowbar, he ducked, he dashed for the door, he screamed a high-pitched terror-yodel, and he pulled the door open into his face, then he bounced and fell back, hitting his head on the edge of the sink as he went down.

  The snake whipped away and found a spot in the opposite corner of the stockroom, where it coiled and watched Sal twitch on the floor.

  Born and raised in the city, Sal had never met a snake in person before. So far, he did not care for them.

  * * *

  The Cheese said to me, she said, “You’re gonna put me through the third degree after giving me the razzmatazz all night on the sand like a hobo?”

  It was maybe six in the morning and we were on the streetcar headed back to North Beach. I woulda sprung for a cab, but you try to catch a cab by the beach at six in the morning. The Cheese had her hair pinned up in that fountain of curls way I like, but otherwise she looked like maybe someone had given her the razzmatazz on the sand like a hobo. Her dress looked like it had been wadded up and stored in a cat box, with the cat, and there was a little half-moon of lipstick on one of her nostrils. I don’t know how it got there, but I was loath to apprise her of it, as she was already somewhat peeved with me.

  “First, it was swell. And second, I was the gentleman and let you be on top, so perhaps it is you who were giving me the razzmatazz in the sand.”

  “Swell, was it? Then why the interrogation?”

  “I just was wondering how that artist knew you worked in the shipyard. He drew you without hardly looking. Like he’d done it before.”

  “So you want me to say I been to Playland with another guy, yeah, I have. And maybe they wanted a keepsake before going off to war, so maybe I sat for that guy before.”

  “They?” I said. I didn’t want to know, but I asked. I thought about some mug in a foxhole on some godforsaken island in the Pacific, bleeding to death all over a pinup of the Cheese. Still, I couldn’t stop myself. “More than one?” I asked.

  There was an old couple leaning on each other at the other end of the car, like they could be sleeping, or maybe someone had loaded them dead onto the streetcar for a ride to the cemetery, because they had not moved since we boarded. The old guy’s hat was pulled down over his eyes. The old broad wore a scarf around her head that made her look like one of those French peasants you see in paintings. Yeah, they coulda been dead.

  “What if there was more than one?” said the Cheese. “It was a long war, and I was lonely. Guys shipping out were scared they might never see home again. So yeah, I gave ’em something nice to remember. If that makes me some kind of floozie in your mind, then maybe you need to rethink how you got that picture.”

  Stilton nodded toward the lapel of my overcoat. I noticed the old broad at the other end of the streetcar opened an eye when the word floozie was used, then closed it real fast when I looked at her, so not dead. I was not relieved. Not at all. I was standing over the Cheese, hanging on to a pole, and I felt like I was gonna be sick.

  “So that’s it?” I said. “You felt sorry for me?”

  “Nah, that ain’t it at all,” said the Cheese. “I like you, Sammy. I like you a lot. But you know how it was.” She took a breath, like it was my turn to say something, but I didn’t, so she jumped in, like she was rescuing me. “I don’t know how horrible it was for you over there, and I ain’t going to ask, but at least you came home. At least you can laugh. And you make me laugh. But some of those guys probably had the last laugh they were ever gonna have the night before they shipped out. You can’t be mad about that . . .”

  But I could, I guess. I had no right to be, but I was mad. Maybe not so much mad, but empty, like my chest was caving in on me. See, for a little bit there, the whole world was me and the Cheese, and I was just fine with that. But suddenly there were all these other guys in it, haunting it like ghosts. I had nothing to say.

  So I sat down. Not on the seat with her, but across the aisle. I was feeling like a bootful of shit, hold the boot. I just sat there, my legs across a couple of seats, my feet out in the aisle, looking at my shoes. I said nothing. The Cheese said nothing.

  People got on the streetcar. People got off. People shuffled and muttered and read the paper. The dead couple ambled off, the woman looked back, gave me a scowl as she stepped down to the street. Save the stink-eye, grandma, I got a whole lifetime of it waiting in the mirror when I get home.

  After Van Ness Avenue, Stilton pulled the cord, rang the bell. The driver stopped at the next block at the intersection of Market and Polk. “I’ll just get off here,” Stilton said. “My uniform’s at work. I’ll just get ready there.”

  “Yeah, I get off at Grant,” I said. That was all.

  She tapped my foot with her finger as she went by. “See ya around sometime,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said I.

  “Watch your step,” called the driver.

  I watched the Cheese step off the streetcar and look back over her shoulder, eyes hooded, like she was ashamed, and I felt as if I just threw a rock and busted out the streetlight that was the only light in my miserable life.

  * * *

  When I got home, the kid was curled up in front of my door like a sleeping squirrel, his butt in the air, his newsboy cap on the floor in front of him. I didn’t know why the kid’s mom hadn’t let him in last night, or why he didn’t let himself into my place with his key, but I was tired enough to drop off right there in the hall beside him, so I unlocked the door, picked the kid up by the back of his overalls, and set him inside my apartment. I kicked his cap inside and locked the door behind us.

  If I left the kid outside, he was likely as not to get eaten by rats, and as beat as I was, there was no way I would make it to work in time without the kid’s wake-up services. I left him there on the floor, sawing logs in one of those soft kid snores, like you hear from a puppy or maybe a baby pig, because every minute or so he let out a little snort. Point is, he didn’t miss a beat, and I was a little jealous that he slept the sleep of the innocent, as they say, despite the fact that he is a horrible little kid.

  Oh, I slept, all right, but it was the jangled sleep of a mug who had just ruined the best thing that ever happened to him, and it seemed like as soon as I closed my eyes the kid was pounding on my door and yelling like the place was on fire. Kid must have gone out while I slept. My watch said I’d been asleep for seven hours, but it felt like seven minutes, and four of those hours were acid stomach and regret.

  “I’m up, kid,” I said, throwing open the door. “Why didn’t you use your key?”

  The kid rolled by me like I was a shadow and headed for the icebox.

  “I mighta lost it,” he said. “I ain’t sayin’.” He was already pulling out the milk and a loaf of bread I keep in the icebox to discourage the weevils and whatnot. “You’re outta cornflakes. Leave me a little extra cabbage and I’ll pick some up for you, no extra charge.”

  “There’s sugar. Make some milk toast,” I told him, but he already had two slices under the broiler and was about to turn on the gas.

  “Look, kid, I gotta get in the shower.” I grabbed my pants off the chair, pulled a buck out of my wallet, and put it on the enamel drainboard. “Get some cornflakes, some butter, and go to the hardware store and get a key mad
e.” I put my key on the drainboard next to the dollar. “You can handle that, right?”

  “What am I, some kind of slave? I ain’t your errand boy. I ain’t some kind of dirty mascarpone.”

  “That’s a cheese, kid.”

  “No it ain’t.”

  A pain hit me in the temples like someone was shooting hot rivets into my coconut, and it wasn’t from the Old Tennis Shoes. “Look, kid, the key is for you, that stuff is for you. Why’d you sleep in the hall last night?”

  “None a’ your business. My ma might be on a mission with Uncle Clement.”

  “The pope?”

  “Very hush-hush.” The kid was watching his toast like it was a science experiment—leaning so close to the broiler, the brim of his cap gave off a little puff of smoke. “Had to leave fast. Locked me out on accident. Whadda ya going to do? Dames can get daffy when the chips are down.”

  I was about to say “Tell me about it.” I was about to say that maybe it wasn’t his fault he was a horrible little kid, because his mother was a horrible mother.

  But, “Yeah. Whadda ya gonna do?” I said as I headed for the shower. When I came out the kid was on his second round of milk toast. He slurped while I dressed.

  “Where’s your cane?”

  “Left it at work. Get that key made, kid, and leave mine under the mat.”

  “I gotta listen to your radio tonight. See if the flying saucers are attacking. You can’t see ’em coming from here on account of the city lights. That’s how they get you.”

  I started to tell him to keep his dirty ears off my radio, as is my policy, but then I said, “Yeah, you keep an ear out, kid. Just turn it off when you’re done. You burn out a tube, it comes out of your pay.”

  “Try and get it, ya dirty manchego.”

  “Also a cheese.”

  “No it ain’t, you lousy—”

  I closed the door on the kid’s rant. Two steps into the street I was feeling like I should head over to the five-and-dime on Polk Street and throw myself on Stilton’s mercy, beg her to forgive me, tell her I made the mistake of my life and I was not a war veteran and I was a liar and bum. Broads love that.

  Probably.

  But I couldn’t dump a load of trouble on her like a bucket of chum. It would stink. It ain’t right.

  So I headed on to Sal’s, and as I walked, I waved to the guys I know on the street.

  “Hey, Vinnie! How’s your mother? . . . Tony! How’s it hangin’? . . . Hey, Enzo, ba fangul, you fucking dago fuck!” (I can say this because when Sal hired me I told him that my family name was originally Tuffelo, not Tiffin, so he welcomed me into goomba society and everyone in the neighborhood thinks I am Italian. I do not disabuse them of this ruse.)

  So as I went, waving, speaking pidgin Italian, I realized I usually tipped my cane, and all of a sudden I wished I had my cane, because I was limping and my foot hurt. I thought of Stilton at the lunch counter, dealing plates off her arm all day while I was sleeping, having to deal with various mooks, mugs, and unsavory citizens, while hurt. And I knew she was hurt, and worse than my stupid foot, because she was a good kid, maybe a little daffy, sad daffy, like Milo said, but sweet daffy. I’m no good for her, and I know it.

  When I got to Sal’s, the front door was closed, locked, the closed sign still hanging there in the window. I figured maybe Sal had stepped out for a minute, but usually he just locked the cash register and had one of the day drunks keep an eye on things until he got back. Around the back, the door was not locked. It wasn’t even completely closed; something was propping it open about four inches. A shoe. It was a shoe that Sal Gabelli was wearing, and from the off-blue color of his skin, I could tell right away that Sal was more than somewhat dead.

  So here I found the aforementioned snake crate sans black mamba and determined that the snake might, indeed, still be in the saloon, and indulged in two burly man-screams in quick succession, one upon finding Sal, and the other upon running into the two tall goons in black standing in my way as I headed out to find Moo Shoes and inform him that our business venture had croaked my boss, and also that we had a business venture.

  The goons were nonplussed by my manly scream, but they recovered before I did, and while I tried to pull the door shut behind me, one stepped in my way.

  “Are you Sal Gabelli?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Sal took a day off.”

  “Who are you?” asked the other tall guy. The only way I could tell them apart is that this one had thick eyebrows above his sunglasses, the other had eyebrows like a dame draws on with a pencil.

  “I’m the janitor,” I said, despite that I was wearing my bartender black-and-whites, including a vest, bow tie, and garters on my sleeves (although I had not donned my apron, due to the interruption of the corpse and so forth).

  “When will Sal be back?” asked thin brows.

  “I don’t know, maybe Monday. I’m just the janitor.”

  Thick brows took a notebook out of his jacket pocket and wrote something down with a short pencil.

  “Did you just write down that I am the janitor?”

  “And the date and time,” said thick brows.

  They did not ask my name. They did not question that I was the janitor, when I was not wearing proper janitor togs, nor did they identify themselves, but they were writing down the time and, I guess, that they talked to the janitor. They didn’t notice that I was sweating like a whore in church, despite the cool weather, and they didn’t ask. So they weren’t cops, unless they were really bad at it, and they were wound entirely too tightly for wiseguys, but the suits, the hats, the sunglasses were matched, like uniforms, right down to the spit-shined Florsheims. Maybe, I thought, they are from one of those loopy churches that send guys in ties out into the jungle to convert cannibals and so forth. Maybe Sal was running a game on them.

  “Can I give Sal a message for you?” I said. “Tell him you stopped by?”

  “No, don’t do that,” said thin brows.

  “We’ll be back,” said thick brows.

  “Okey-dokey,” I said. “I gotta scram, guys,” I said. “Another job. Go with God or whatever,” and I pushed my way past them and headed up to Broadway, my heart still beating like Gene Krupa in my chest. Definitely loopy church guys.

  11

  How to Ice a Guy

  Turns out I can scamper like a champ without my cane after I’ve had a scare, so I made quick time to Club Shanghai, where the doorman gave me the hairy eyeball as I blew past him. Eddie wasn’t at the host’s podium, but the young guy was. I didn’t remember his name.

  “Hey, Skippy, Eddie around?”

  “Name’s Lou,” said the kid. Now I remembered.

  “I thought it was Low.”

  “Not anymore,” he said. “Eddie’s in the lounge.” He tossed his head toward the door to the side. The cocktail lounge was all red velvet and gold dragons, less sparkly than the main room. Eddie was standing at a dark oak bar next to Lois Fong, who was not yet in her evening clothes, but who looked very well put together indeed, even in her day outfit, which involved a sage-green linen dress and a pair of dark green platform Mary Janes, the heels of which were high enough to give vertigo to a mountain goat. She sat at the bar with her heels hooked into the brass rungs of her stool.

  “Kid, would you get Eddie for me? Tell him I need to talk to him a second.”

  “You can go on in.”

  “Nah, I don’t think Lois likes me, and he looks like he’s making time. Tell him it will just be a second.”

  I took a few steps back toward the door, the carpet so soft and thick it reminded me of the floor in the funhouse last night, “like meat loaf,” the Cheese had said, and I felt a stab in my heart.

  “What’s shakin’, bacon?” said Moo Shoes. Red silk jacket, gold lamé bow tie, black-and-white wingtips, of course.

  “Trouble,” I said.

  “That other thing? Because we shouldn’t mention that other thing. My uncle.”

  “No, not tha
t,” I said.

  “Dame trouble again?”

  “Yes. But no. Different trouble.”

  “Confess, sinner.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Bing Crosby movie. Maybe. I don’t know. What’s the song, Armstrong? I gotta get back to Lois. She’s telling me her woes. Things are looking up.”

  Lou came back to the podium and Eddie waved him off. “Take five, Lou,” Eddie said. “I got this.” Lou took a powder. To me, Moo Shoes said, “So . . . ?”

  “Sal Gabelli might be dead.”

  This was clearly not what Moo Shoes expected and he did a double take. “Might be dead in that he is missing? Or might be dead in that someone has put him in a sack, and dropped him in the bay? Which is understandable. Or might be dead like he is in the hospital with a bum ticker and he has only hours left?”

  “Might be dead in that he is definitely dead, in the back room of Sal’s.”

  “Whoa!” Moo Shoes looked around, peeked back into the lounge, gave Lois a wave and a wink—he’ll be right back—then, “What the hell, Sammy? Did you kill him?”

  “No!”

  “Good.”

  “Well, yes. Well, kind of—”

  “How did you kind of kill him? Because if it was an accident—”

  “Well, we killed him.”

  “We? You and that Cheese dame?”

  “No, we like you and me.”

  “Look, pal, you know I’d stand up for you, but you kill a guy—”

  “It was our snake,” I interrupted. “Our snake killed Sal.”

  Moo Shoes was a little stunned. I saw this and I gave him a second to collect his thoughts, but then Lois Fong peeked her head around the corner.

  “Ed-deee, I need to talk to you.”