Legs (27 page)

"Nothing but cider in them barrels."

"We'll see. Now move."

"Move where?"

"Into the car, goddamn it," Jack said, and
he slapped Streeter on the back of the head with his gun hand. He
knocked off the goddamn stinking cap. Streeter bent to pick it up and
turned to Jack with his grin. He couldn't really be grinning.

"Where you taking that cider?"

"Up home, and some over to Bartlett's."

"The kid?"

"His old man."

"You got a still yourself?"

"No."

"Bartlett got a still?"

"Not that I know of. "

"What's all the cider for then?"

"Drink some, make vinegar, bottle some, sell
some of that to stores up in the hollow, sell what's left to
neighbors. Or anybody."

"Where's the still?"

"Ain't no still I know of."

"Who do you know's got a still?"

"Never hear of nobody with a still."

"You heard I run the only stills that run in
this county? You heard that?"

"Yes siree, I heard that."

"So who runs a still takes that much cider?"

"Ain't that much when you cut it up."

"We'll see how much it is," Jack said. He
told Kiki to sit in front and he put Streeter and Bartlett in the
back seat. He pulled their caps down over their eyes and sat in front
with Kiki while Fogarty drove the truck inside the cemetery entrance.
Fogarty was gone ten minutes, which passed in silence, and when he
came back, he said, "Looks like it's all hard cider. Twenty-four
barrels." And he slipped behind the wheel. Jack rode with his
arm over the back seat and his pistol pointed at the roof. No one
spoke all the way to Acra, and Streeter and Bartlett barely moved.
They sat with their hands in their laps and their caps over their
eyes. When they got out of the car inside the garage, Jack made them
face the wall and tied their hands behind them. Fogarty backed the
car out, closed the door, and took Kiki inside the house. Jack sat
Streeter and Bartlett on the floor against a ladder.

Shovels hung over the old man's head like a set of
assorted guillotines. Jack remembered shovels on the wall of the
cellar in The Village where the Neary mob took him so long ago when
they thought he'd hijacked a load of their beer—and he had. They
tied him to a chair with wire around his arms and legs, then worked
him over. They got weary and left him, bloody and half conscious, to
go to sleep. He was fully awake and moved his arms back and forth
against the wire's twist until he ripped his shirt. He sawed steadily
with the wire until it ripped the top off his right bicep and let him
slip his arm out of the bond. He climbed up a coal chute and out a
window, leaving pieces of the bicep on the twist of wire, and on the
floor: skin, flesh, plenty of blood. Bled all the way home. Bicep
flat now. Long, rough scar there now. Some Nearys paid for that scar.

He looked at the old man and saw the ropes hanging on
the wall behind him, can of kerosene in the corner, paintbrushes
soaking in turpentine. Rakes, pickax. Old man another object. Another
tool. Jack hated all tools that refused to yield their secrets. Jack
was humiliated before the inanimate world. He hated it, kicked it
when it affronted him. He shot a car once that betrayed him by
refusing to start. Blew holes in its radiator.

The point where the hanging rope bellied out on the
garage wall looked to Jack like the fixed smile on Streeter's face.
Streeter was crazy to keep smiling. He wasn't worth a goddamn to
anybody if he was crazy. You can kill crazies. No loss. Jack made
ready to kill yet another man. Wilson, the first one he killed.
Wilson, the card cheat. Fuck you, cheater, you're dead. I'm sorry for
your kids.

In the years after he dumped Wilson in the river Jack
used Rothstein's insurance connections to insure family men he was
going to remove from life. He made an arrangement with a thieving
insurance salesman, sent him around to the family well in advance of
the removal date. When the deal was sealed, give Jack a few weeks,
then bingo!

'"
You got any insurance, old man?"

"No."

"You got any family?"

"Wife."

"Too bad. She's going to have to bury you best
she can. Unless you tell me where that still is you got hid."

"Ain't got no still hid nowheres, mister. I told
you that."

"Better think again, old man. You know where the
still is, kid?" Dickie Bartlett shook his head and turned to the
wall. Only a kid. But if Jack killed one, he would have to kill two.
Tough break, kid.

"Take off your shoes."

Streeter slowly untied the rawhide laces of his high
shoe-boots without altering his grin. He pulled off one shoe and Jack
smelled his foot, his sweaty white wool sock, his long underwear
tucked inside the sock. Country leg, country foot, country stink.
Jack looked back at the grin, which seemed as fixed as the shape of
the nose that hovered above it. But you don't fix a grin permanently.
Jack knew. That old son of a bitch is defying me, is what he thought.
He hasn't got a chance and yet he's defying Jack Diamond's law, Jack
Diamond's threat, Jack Diamond himself. That grinning facade is a
fake and Jack will remove it. Jack knows all there is to know about
fake facades. He remembered his own grin in one of the newspapers as
he went into court in Philadelphia. Tough monkey, smilin' through.
They won't get to me. And then in the courtroom he knew how empty
that smile was, how profoundly he had failed to create the image he
wanted to present to the people of Philadelphia, not only on his
return but all his life, all through boyhood, to live down the
desertion charge in the Army, and, worse, the charge that he stole
from his buddies. Not true. So many of the things they said about
Jack were untrue and yet they stuck.

He was a nobody in the Philadelphia court.
Humiliated. Arrested coming in, then kicked out. And stay out, you
bum. I speak for the decent people of this city in saying that
Philadelphia doesn't want you any more than Europe did. Vomit. Puke,
puke. Vomit. Country feet smelled like vomit. Jack's family
witnessing it all in the courtroom. Jack always loved them in his
way. Jack dumped about eight cigarettes out of his Rameses pack and
pocketed them. He twisted the pack and lit it with a loose match,
showed the burning cellophane and paper to Streeter, who never lost
his grin. Jack said, "Where's the still?"

"Jee-zus, mister, I ain't seen no still. I ain't
and that's a positive fact, I tell you."

Jack touched the fire to the sock and then to the
edge of the underwear. Streeter shook it and the fire went out. Jack
burned his own hand, dropped the flaming paper and let it burn out.
Fogarty came back in then, pistol in hand.

"Kneel on him," Jack said, and with pistol
pointed at Streeter's head, Fogarty knelt on the old man's calf. The
pistol wasn't loaded, Fogarty said later. He was taking no chances
shooting anybody accidentally. It had been loaded when they stopped
Streeter's truck because he felt when he traveled the roads with Jack
he was bodyguard as well as chauffeur, and he would stand no chance
of coping with a set of killers on wheels if his gun was empty. But
now he wasn't a bodyguard anymore.

"He's a tough old buzzard," Jack said.

"Why don't you tell him what he wants to know?"
Fogarty said conspiratorially to Streeter.

"Can't tell what I don't know," Streeter
said. The grin was there. The flame had not changed it. Jack knew now
he would remove that grin with flame. Finding the still was receding
in importance, but such a grin of defiance is worth punishing. Asks
for punishing. Will always get what it asks for. The Alabama sergeant
who tormented Jack and other New York types in the platoon because of
their defiance. "New Yoahk mothahfucks." Restriction.
Punishment. KP over and over. Passes denied. And then Jack swung and
got the son bitch in the leg with an iron bar. Had to go AWOL after
that, couldn't even go back. That was when they got him, in New
Yoahk. Did defiance win the day for Jack? It was satisfying, but Jack
admits it did not win the day. Should have shot the son bitch in some
ditch off-post. Let the rats eat him.

"Where's that still, you old son bitch?"

"Hey, mister, I'd tell you if I knew. You think
I'd keep anythin' back if I knew? I dunno, mister, I just plain
dunno."

Jack lit the sock, got it flaming this time, and the
old man yelled, shook his whole leg again and rocked Fogarty off it.
The flame went out again. Jack looked, saw the grin. The old man is
totally insane. Should be bugged. Crazy as they make 'em. Crazy part
of a man that takes any kind of punishment, suffers all humiliations.
No pride.

"You old son bitch, ain't you got no pride? Tell
me the goddamn answer to my question. Ain't you got no sense? I'm
gonna hang your ass off a tree you don't tell me what I want to know.
"

But you can't really punish a crazy like that, Jack.
He loves it. That's why he's sitting there grinning. Some black
streak across his brain makes him crazier than a dog with his head
where his ass oughta be. He's making you crazy now, Jack. Got you
talking about hanging. You can't be serious, can you?

"All right, old man, get up. Speed, get that
rope."

"What you got in mind, Jack?"

"I'm gonna hang his Cairo country ass from that
maple tree outside."

"Hey," said Streeter, "you ain't
really gonna hang me?"

"I'm gonna hang you like a side of beef,"
Jack said.

"I'm gonna pop your eyes like busted eggs. I'm
gonna make your tongue stretch so far out you'll be lickin' your
toes."

"I ain't done nothin' to nobody, mister. Why you
gonna hang me?"

"Because you're lyin' to me, old man."

"No, sir, I ain't lyin'. I ain't lyin'."

"How old are you right now?"

"Fifty."

"You ain't as old as I thought, but you ain't
gonna be fifty-one. You're a stubborn buzzard, but you ain't gonna be
fifty-one. Bring him out. "

Fogarty led the old man outside with only one shoe,
and Jack threw the rope over the limb of the maple. He tied a knot,
looped the rope through the opening in the knot-a loop that would
work like an animal's choker chain—and  slipped it over
Streeter's neck. Jack pulled open a button, one down from the collar,
to give the rope plenty of room.

"Jack," Fogarty said, shaking his head.
Jack tugged the rope until he took up all the slack and the rope rose
straight up from Streeter's neck.

"One more chance," Jack said. "Where
is that goddamn still you were headed for?"

"Jee-zus Keh-ryst, mister, there just ain't no
still, you think I'm kiddin' you'? You got a rope around my neck. You
think I wouldn't tell you anything I knew if I knew it? Jee-zus,
mister, I don't want to die."

"Listen, Jack. I don't think we ought to do
this."

Fogarty was trembling. The poor goddamn trucker. Like
watching a movie and knowing how it ends, Fogarty said later.

"Shitkicker!" Jack yelled. "Where is
it? SHITKICKER! SHITKICKER!"

Before the old man could answer, Jack tugged at the
rope and up went Streeter. But he had worked one hand loose and he
made a leap as Jack tugged. He grabbed the rope over his head and
held it.

"Retie the son of a bitch," Jack said, and
Fogarty knew then he was party to a murder. Full accomplice now and
the tied-up Bartlett kid a witness. There would be a second murder on
this night. Fogarty, how far you've come under Jack's leadership. He
tied the old man's hands, and Jack then wound the rope around both
his own arms and his waist so it wouldn't slip, and he jerked it
again and moved backward. The old man's eyes bugged as he rose off
the ground. His tongue came out and he went limp. The Bartlett kid
yelled and then started to cry, and Jack let go of the rope. The old
man crumpled.

"He's all right," Jack said. "The old
son of a bitch is too miserable to die. Hit him with some water."

Fogarty half-filled a pail from an outside faucet and
threw it on Streeter. The old man opened his eyes.

"You know, just maybe he's telling the truth,"
Fogarty said.

"He's lying."

"He's doing one hell of a good job."

Jack took Fogarty's pistol and waved it under
Streeter's nose. At least he can t kill him with that, Fogarty
thought.

"It's too much work to hang you," Jack said
to Streeter, "so I'm gonna blow your head all over the lawn.
I'll give you one more chance."

The old man shook his head and closed his eyes. His
grin was gone. I finally got rid of that, is what Jack thought. But
then he was suddenly enraged again at the old man. You made me do
this to you, was the nature of Jack's accusation. You turned me into
a goddamn sadist because of your goddamn stinking country
stubbornness. He laid the barrel of the pistol against the old man's
head and then he thought: Fogarty. And he checked the cylinder. No
bullets. He gave Fogarty a look of contempt and handed him back the
empty pistol. He took his own .38 from his coat pocket, and Streeter,
watching everything, started to tremble, his lip turned down now.
Smile not only gone, but that face unable even to remember that it
had smiled even once in all its fifty years. Jack fired one shot. It
exploded alongside Streeter's right ear. The old man's head jerked
and Jack fired again, alongside the other ear.