A Bottle of Milk for Mother by Nelson Algreen

A Bottle of Milk for Mother by Nelson Algreen**********
I feel I am of them— I belong to those convicts and prostitutes And henceforth I will not deny them— For how can I deny myselft
WHITMAN ********************************************************************TWO MONTHS after the Polish Warriors S.A.C. had had their heads shaved, Bruno Lefty Bicek got into his final difficulty with the Racine Street police. The arresting of¬ficers and a reporter from the Dziennik Chicagoski were grouped about the captain's desk when the boy was urged forward into the room by Sergeant Adamovitch, with two fingers wrapped About the boy1! broid belt: A full-bodied boy wearing a worn and sleeveless blue work shirt grown too tight across the shoulders; and the shoulders them¬selves with a loose swing to them. His skull and face were shining from a recent scrubbing, so that the little bridge* less nose glistened between the protective points of the cheekbones. Behind the desk sat Ko/uk, eleven years on the force and brother to an alderman. The reporter stuck a cigarette behind one ear like a pencil. ’“We spotted him followin’ the drunk down Chicago—” Sergeant Comiskey began. Captain Kozak interrupted. *“Let the jackroller tell us how he done it hisself." ‘*1 ain’t no jackroller.” “What you doin’ here, then?”' Bicek folded his naked arms. “Answer me. If you ain’t here for jackrollin’ it must be for strong-arm robD’ry—’r you one of them Chicago Av’noo moll-buzzers?” “I ain’t that neither.” “C’mon, c’mon, I seen you in here before—what were you up to, followin’ that poor old man?” “I ain’t been in here before.” Neither Sergeant Milano, Comiskey, nor old Adamo- vitch moved an inch; yet the boy felt the semicircle about him drawing closer. Out of the comer of his eye he watched the reporter undoing the top button of his mangy raccoon coat, as though the barren little query room were already growing too warm for him. “What were you doin’ on Chicago Av*noo in the first place when you live up around Division? Ain’t your own ward big enough you have to come down here to get in trouble? What do you think you’re here for?” “Well, I was just walkin' down Chicago like I said, to get a bottle of milk for Mother, when the officers jumped me. I didn’t even see ’em drive up, they wouldn’t let me say a word, I got no idea what I’m nere for. I was just doin’ a errand for Mother *n—” m if i If? iff I mm mg “All right, son, you want us to book you as a pickup ’n I i hold you.overnight, is that It?" **\ e$ sir.** “What about this, then?1* Konk Hipped a spring-blade knife with a five-inch blade onto the police blotter; the boy resisted an impulse to lean forward and take it. His own clouble-edged'doiible-join ted spring-blade cuts-all genuine Filipino twisty-handled all- American gut-ripner, “Is it yours or ain’t it?** “Never seen it before, Captain.** Kozak pulled a billy out of his belt, spread the blade across the bend of the blotter before him, and with one blow clubbed the blade off two inches from the handle. The boy winced as though he himself had received the blow. Korak threw the broken blade into a basket and the knife into a drawer. “Know why I did that, son?’* “Yes sir.** “Tell me.** “ ’Cause it*s three inches to the heart.** “No. 'Cause it's against the law to carry more than three inches of knife. C'mon, Lefty, tell us about it. 'N it better be good.** The boy began slowly, secretly gratified that Kozak ap¬peared to know he was the Warriors* first-string left-hana- er: maybe he'd been out at that game against the Knothole Wonders the Sunday he’d finished his own game and then had relieved Dropkick Kodadek in the sixth in the second. Why hadn’t anyone called him “Iron-Man Bicek** or “Fire-ball Bruno" for that one? “Everythin* you say can be used against you," Kozak warned him earnestly. “Don’t talk unless you want to." His lips formed each syllable precisely. Then he added absently, as though talking to someone unseen, “We’ll just hold you on an open charge till you do." And his lips hadn’t moved at all. The boy licked his own lips, feeling a dryness coming into his throat and a tightening in his stomach. “We seen this boobatch with his collar turned inside out cash’n his check by Konstanty Stachula's Tonsorial Palace of Art on Division. So I followed him a way, that was all. Just break'n the old monotony was all. Just a notion, you might say, that come over me. I’m just a neighborhood kid, Cap¬tain.” He stopped as though he had finished the story. Kozak glanced over the boy's shoulder at the arresting officers and Lefty began again hurriedly. "Ever' once in a while he'd pull a little single-shot,of Scotch out of his pocket, stop a second t' toss it down, 'n toss the bottle at the car tracks. I picked up a bottle that didn't bust but there wasn't a spider left in 'er, the boo- batch'd drunk her dry. 'N do you know, he had his pockets full of them little bottles? 'Stead of buyin’ hisself a fifth in the first place. Can't understand a man who'll buy liquor that way. Right before the corner of Walton 'n Noble he popped into a hallway. That was Chiney-Eye-the-Prin- cinct-Captain's hallway, so I popped right in after him. Me'n Chiney-Eye ’r just like that.” The boy crossed two fingers of his left hand and asked innocently, “Has the alderman been in to straighten this out, Captain?” “What time was all this, Lefty?” “Well, some of the street lamps was lit awready 'n I didn't see nobody either way down Noble. It'd just started* spitt'n a little snow 'n I couldn't see clear down Walton account of Wojciechowski's Tavern bein' in the way. He was a old guy, a dino you. He couldn't speak a word of English. But he started in cryin' about how every time he gets a little drunk the same old thing happens to him 'n he's gettin' fed up, he lost his last three checks in the very same hallway 'n it's gettin' so his family don't believe him no more . . .” Lefty paused, realizing that his tongue was going faster than his brain. He unfolded his arms and shoved them down his pants pockets; the pants were turned up at the cuffs and the cuffs were frayed. He drew a colorless cap off his hip pocket and stood clutching it in his left hand. “I didn't take him them other times, Captain,” he an- ticipated Kozak. “Who did?" Silence. “What's Benkowski doin' for a livin' these days, Lefty?" “Just nutsin’ around." “What's Nowogrodski up to?” “Goes wolfin' on roller skates by Riverview. The rink's open all year round." “Does he have much luck?" .“Never turns up a hair. They go by too fast." “What’s that evil-eye up to?'* Silence. rfYou know who I mean. Idzikowski." “The Finger?" “You know who I mean. Don’t stall." “He’s hexin’ fights, I heard." “Seen Kodadek lately?" “I guess, A week 'r two 'r a month ago." “What was he up to?" “Sir?" “What was Kodadek doin' the last time you seen him?" “You mean Dropkick? He was nutsin' around.” “Does he nuts around drunks in hallways?" Somewhere in the room a small clock or wrist watch * began ticking distinctly. “Nutsin' around ain't jackrollin’." “You mean Dropkick ain't a jackroller but you are." The boy's blond lashes shuttered his eyes. “All right, get ahead with your lyin’ a little faster.” Kozak's head came down almost neckless onto his shoul¬ders, and his face was molded like a flatiron, the temples narrow and the jaws rounded. Between the jaws and the open collar, against the graying hair of the chest, hung a tiny crucifix, slender and golden, a shade lighter than his tunic's golden buttons. “I told him I wasn't gonna take his check, I just needed a little change, I'd pay it back someday. But maybe he didn’t understand. He kept hollerin’ how he lost his last check, please to let him keep this one. ‘Why you drink'n It NIHON AiOIKN it all up, then, I put it to him, ‘if you‘re that anxious to hold onto it?' He gimme a foxy grin then ’n pulls out four of them little bottles from four different pockets, 'n each one was a different kind of liquor. I could have one, he tells me in Polish, which do I want, *n I slapped all four out of his hands. All four. I don’t like to see no full-grown man drinkin* that way. A Polak hillbilly he was, ’n cer- tain’y no citizen. “ ’Now let me have that change/ I asked him, 'n that wasn’t so much t* ask. I don’t go around just lookin’ fer trouble, Captain. ’N my feet was slop-full of water ’n snow. I’m just a neighborhood fella. But he acted like I was gonna kill him 'r somethin’. I got one hand over his mouth ’n a half nelson behind him ’n talked polite-like in Polish in his ear, *n he begun sweatin' *n tryin’t’ wrench away on me. ‘Take it easy,* I asked him. ‘Be reas’nable, we’re both in this up to our necks now.’ ’N he wasn’t drunk no more then, ’n he was plenty t’ hold onto. You wouldn’t think a old boobatch like that’d have so much stren’th left in him, boozin' down Division night after night, year after year, like he didn’t have no home to go to. He pulled my hand off his mouth 'n started hollerin’, * Mlody bandyta! Mlody bandy ta!* ’n I could feel him slippin’. He was just too strong fer a kid like me to hold—” “Because you were reach'n for his wallet with the other hand?” “Oh no. The reason I couldn’t hold him was my right hand had the nelson ’n I’m not so strong there like in my left 'n even my left ain’t what it was before I thrun it out pitchin* that double-header.” “So you kept the rod in your left hand?” The boy hesitated. Then: “Yes sir.” And felt a single drop of sweat slide down his side from under his armpit. Stop and slide again down to the belt. “What did you get off him?” “I tell you, I had my hands too full to get anythin*— that’s just what I been tryin’ to tell you. I didn’t get so much as one of them little single-shots for all my trouble.” “How many slugs did you fire?” one, Captain. That was all there was in 'er. I didn’t really fire, though. Just at his feet. T’ scare him so’s he wouldn’t jump me. I fired in self-defense. I just wanted to get out of there.” He glanced helplessly around at Co miskey and Adamovitch. “You do crazy things sometimes, fellas—well, that’s all I was doin’.” The boy caught his tongue and stood mute. In the si¬lence of the query room there was only the scraping of the reporter’s pencil and the unseen wrist watch. “I’ll ask Chiney-Eye if it’s legal, a reporter takin’ down a confes¬sion, that's my out,’’ the boy thought desperately, and added aloud, before he could stop himself: “ ’N beside I had to show him—” “Show him what, son?” Silence. “Show him what, Left-hander?” “That I wasn’t just another greenhorn sprout like he thought.” “Did he say you were just a sprout?” “No. But I c’d tell. Lot of people think I'm just a green kid. I show ’em. I guess I showed 'em now all right.’’ He felt he should be apologizing for something and couldn’t tell whether it was for strong-arming a man or for failing to strong-arm him. “I'm just a neighborhood kid. I belonged to the Keep- Our-City-Clean Club at St. John Cant’us. I told him polite- like, like a Polish-American citizen, this was Chiney-Eye- a-Friend-of-Mine’s hallway. ‘No more after this one,’ I told him. ‘This is your last time gettin' rolled, old man. After this I’m pertectin’ you, I'm seein’ to it nobody touches you—but the people who live here don’t like this sort of thing goin' on any more’n you 'r I do. There’s gotta be a stop to it, old man—'n we all gotta live, don’t we?’ That’s what I told him in Polish.” Kozak exchanged glances with the prim-faced reporter from the Chicagoski, who began cleaning his black tor-toise-shell spectacles hurriedly yet delicately, with the fringed tip of his cravat. They depended from a black ribbon; he snapped them back onto his beak. * gjill mg 35 “You shot him in the groin, Lefty. He's dead." The reporter leaned slightly forward, but perceived no special reaction and so relaxed. A pretty comfy old chair for a dirty old police station, he thought lifelessly. Kozak shaded his eyes with his gloved hand and looked down at his charge sheet. The night lamp on the desk was still lit, as though he had been working all night; as the morning grew lighter behind him lines came out below his eyes, black as though packed with soot, and a curious droop came to the St. Bernard mouth. “You shot him through the groin-zip.” Kozak's voice came, flat and unemphatic, reading from the charge sheet as though without understanding. “Five children. Stella, Mary, Grosha, Wanda, Vincent. Thirteen, ten, six, six, and one two months. Mother invalided since last birth, name of Rose. WPA fifty-five dollars. You told the truth about that, at least.” Lefty’s voice came in a shout: “You know what? That bullet must of bounced, that’s what!” ‘ Who was along?” “I was singlin’. Lone-wolf stuff.” His voice possessed the first faint touch of fear. “You said, *We seen the man.’ Was he a big man? How big a man was he?” “I'd judge two hunerd twenty pounds,” Comiskey of¬fered, “at least. Fifty pounds heavier 'n this boy, just about. 'N half a head taller.” “Who’s ‘we,’ Left-hander?” “Captain, I said, We seen.' Lots of people, fellas, seen him is all I meant, cashin’ his check by Stachula’s when the place was crowded. Konstanty cashes checks if he knows you. Say, I even know the project that old man was on, far as that goes, because my old lady wanted we should give up the store so’s I c’d get on it. But it was just me done it, Captain.” The raccoon coat readjusted his glasses. He would say something under a by-line like “This correspondent has never seen a colder gray than that in the eye of the wanton killer who arrogantly styles himself the lone wolf of Po- tomac Street .” He shifted uncomfortably, wanting to get farther from the wall radiator but disliking to rise and push the heavy chair. “Where was that bald-headed pal of yours all this time?” “Don't know the fella, Captain. Nobody got hair any more around the neighborhood, it seems. The whole damn Triangle went *n got army haircuts by Stachula's.” “Just you n Benkowski, I mean. Don't be afraid, son— we're not try in' to ring in anythin' you done afore this. Just this one you were out cowboy in' with Benkowski on; were you help'n him 'r was he help'n you? Did you 'r him have the rod?” Lefty heard a Ford V-8 pull into the rear of the station, and a moment later the splash of the gas as the officers re-fueled. Behind him he could hear Milano’s heavy breath¬ing. He looked down at his shoes, carefully buttoned all the way up and tied with a double bowknot. He'd have to have new laces mighty soon or else start tying them with a single bow. “That Benkowski's sort of a toothless monkey used to go on at the City Garden at around a hundred an' eighteen pounds, ain't he?” “Don't know the fella well enough t’ say.” “Just from seein' him fight once 'r twice is all. 'N he wore a mouthpiece, I couldn't tell about his teeth. Seems to me he came in about one thirty-three, if he's the same fella you're thinkin' of, Captain.” “I guess you fought at the City Garden once 'r twice yourself, ain’t you?” “Oh, once 'r twice.” “How'd you make out, Left’?” “Won 'em both on K.O.S. Stopped both fights in the first. One was against that boogie from the Savoy. If he woulda got up I woulda killed him fer life. Fer Christ I would. I didn't know I could hit like I can.” “With Benkowski in your comer both times?” “Oh no, sir.” “That's a bloodsuck’n lie. I seen him in your comer with my own eyes the time you won off Cooney from tije C.Y.O. He's your manager, jackroller.” ■‘I didn't say he wasn't*' “You said he wasn't secondin' you.** “He don't" “Who does?" ,rfThe Finger." “You told me the Finger was your hex-man. Make up your mind." “He does both, Captain. He handles the bucket 'n sponge 'n in between he fingers the guy I'm fightin', 'n if it's close he fingers the ref 'n judges. Finger, he never losed a fight He waited for the boogie outside the dressing room 'n pointed him clear to the ring. He win that one for me awright." The boy spun the frayed greenish cap in his hand in a concentric circle about his index finger, remem¬bering a time when the cap was new and had earlaps. The bright checks were all faded now, to the color of worn pavement, and the earlaps were tatters. “What possessed your mob to get their heads shaved, Lefty?" “I strong-armed him myself, I'm rugged as a bull.” The boy began to swell his chest imperceptibly; when his lungs were quite full he shut his eyes, like swimming under water at the Oak Street beach, and let his breath out slow¬ly, ounce by ounce. “I didn't ask you that. I asked you what happened to your hair." Lefty's capricious mind returned abruptly to the word “possessed" that Kozak had employed. That had a randy ring, sort of: “What possessed you boys?" “I forgot what you just asked me." “I asked you why you didn't realize it'd be easier for us to catch up with your mob when all of you had your heads shaved." “I guess we figured there'd be so many guys with heads shaved it'd be harder to catch a finger than if we all had hair. But that was some accident all the same. A fella was gonna lend Ma a barber chair 'n go fifty-fifty with her shavin’ all the Polaks on P'tom'c Street right back of the A fceifl* «f Milk Im fAofhm •{?**» fp* tickets. So she started on me, just to show the fcllaS', but the hair made her sicker 'n ever 'n back of the store • the only place she got to lie down 'n I hadda finish the job myself. I he fellas begun giv'n me a Christ-awful razzin’ then, evn day. God on God, wherever I went around the Tri- anglc, all the neighborhood fellas 'n little niducks 'n old- time hoods by the Broken Knuckle, whenever they seen me they was pointin' 'n laughin' 'n sayin', 'Hi, Baldy Bicekl’ So I went home 'n got the clippers 'n the first guy 1 seen was Bibleback Watrobinski, you wouldn't know him. I jumps him 'n pushes the clip right through the middle of his hair—he ain't had a haircut since the aider- man {jot indicted you—1'n then he took one look at what I done m the drugstore window *n we both bust out laughin’ ’n laughin', ’n fin'lly Bible says I better finish what I started. So he set down on the curb 'n I finished him. When I got all I could off that way I took him back to the store 'n heated water 'n shaved him close 'n Ma couldn’t see the point at all. "Me n Bible prowled around a couple days 'n here come Catfoot Nowogrodski from Fry Street you, out of Stachula's with a spanty-new sideburner haircut 'n a green tie. I grabbed his arms 'n let Bible run it through the middle just like I done him. Then it was Catfoot's turn, 'n we caught Chester Chekhovka fer him, 'n fer Chester we got Cowboy Okulanis from by the Nort'westem Via¬duct you, 'n fer him we got Mustang, fn fer Mustang we got John from the Joint, 'n fer John we got Snake Bara- nowski, 'n we kep’ nght on goin* that way till we was doin’ guys we never seen before even, Wallios 'n Greeks 'n a Flip from Clark Street he musta been, walkin' with a white girl we done it to. 'N fin'lly all the sprouts in the Triangle start cornin' around with their heads shaved, they want to join up with the Baldheads A.C., they called it. They thought it was a club you. "It got so a kid with his head shaved could beat up on a bigger kid because the big one'd be a-scared to fight back hard, he thought the Balaneads'd get him. So that’s why we changed our name then, that's why we’re not the War¬riors any more, we’re the Baldhead True American Social ’n Athletic Club. “I played first for the Warriors when I wasn’t on the mound,” he added cautiously, “ ’n I'm enterin’ the Gold’n Gloves next year 'less I go to collitch instead. I went to St. John Cant’us all the way through. Eight’ grade, that is. If I keep on gainin’ weight I’ll be a hunerd ninety-eight this time next year *n be five-foot-ten—I’m a fair-size light- heavy right this minute. That’s what in England they call a cruiser weight you.” He shuffled a step and made as though to unbutton his shirt to show his proportions. But Adamovitch put one hand on his shoulders and slapped the boy’s hand down. He didn’t like this kid. This was a low-class Polak. He himself was a high-class Polak because his name was Ad¬amovitch and not Adamo wski. This sort of kid kept spoil¬ing things for the high-class Polaks by always showing off instead of just being good citizens like the Irish. That was why the Irish ran the City Hall and Police Department and the Board of Education and the Post Office while the Polaks stayed on relief and got drunk and never got any¬where and had everybody down on them. All they could do like the Irish, old Adamovitch reflected bitterly, was to fight under Irish names to get their ears knocked off at the City Garden. MThat’s why I want to get out of this jam,” this one was saying beside him. “So's it don’t ruin my career in the rope’ arena. I’m goin’ straight. This has sure been one good lesson fer me. Now I’ll go to a big-ten collitch 'n make good you.” Now, if tne college-coat asked him, “What big-ten col¬lege?” he’d answer something screwy like “The Boozo- logical Stoodent-Collitch.” That ought to set Kozak back awhile, they might even send him to a bug doc. He’d have to be careful—not too screwy. Just screwy enough to get by without involving Benkowski. He scuffed his shoes and there was no sound in the close little room save his uneasy scuffling; square-toed boy’s IPlp-' • * |i*|mMtt7'w». .*• si-.»' 40 A Bottle of Milk for Mother shoes, laced with a button-hook. He wanted to look more closely at the reporter but every time he caught the glint of the fellow’s glasses he felt awed and Would have to drop his eyes; he’d never seen glasses on a string like that before and would have given a great deal to Wear them a moment. He took tp looking steadily out of the barred window be¬hind Kozak’s head, where the January sun was glowing sullenly* like a flame held steadily in a fog. Heard an empty truck clattering east on Chicago, sounding like either a ’38 Chewie or a ’37 Ford dragging its safety chain against the car tracks; closed his eyes and imagined sparks ^flashing from the tracks as the iron struck, bounced, and strpck again. The bullet had bounced too. Wow. “What do you think We ought to do with a man like you, Bicek?” The boy heard the change from the familiar “Lefty” to “Bicek” with a pang; and the dryness began in his throat again. _ , ^ I;, v; “One to fourteen is all I can catch fer manslaughter.” He appraised Kozak as coolly as he could. “You like farm work the next fourteen years? Is that okay with you?” “I said that’s all I could get, at the most. This is a first offense ’n self-defense too. I’ll plead the unwritten law*” “Who give you that idea?” “Thought of it myself. Just now. You ain’t got a chance to send me over the road ’n you know it.” “We can send you to St. Charles, Bicek. *N transfer you when you come of age. Unless we can make it first-degree murder.” The boy ignored the latter possibility. “Why, a few years on a farm'd true me up fine. I planned t' cut out cigarettes ’n whisky anyhow before J turn pro— a farm’d be just the place to do that.” “By the time you’re released you’ll be thirty-two, Bicek —too late to turn pro then, ain’t it?” “I wouldn’t wait that long. Hungry Piontek-from-by- the-Warehouse you, he lammed twice from that St. Charles farm. ’N Hungry don't have all his marbles even. He ain't even a citizen." “Then let's talk about somethin' you couldn't lam out of so fast 'n easy. Like the chair. Did you know that Bogat- ski from Noble Street, Bicek? The boy that burned last summer, I mean." A plain-clothes man stuck his head in the door and called confidently: “That's the man, Captain. That's the man." Bicek forced himself to grin good-naturedly. He was getting pretty good, these last couple days, at grinning under pressure. When a fellow got sore he couldn't think straight, he reflected anxiously. And so he yawned in Kozak's face with deliberateness, stretching himself as ef¬fortlessly as a cat. "Captain, I ain't been in serious trouble like this be¬fore ..he acknowledged, and paused dramatically. He'd let them have it straight from the shoulder now: “So I'm mighty glad to be so close to the alderman. Even if he is indicted.” There. Now they know. He’d told them. “You talkin' about my brother, Bicek?" The boy nodded solemnly. Now they knew who they had hold of at last. * r i The reporter took the cigarette off his ear and hung it on his lower lip. And Adamovitch guffawed. The boy jerked toward the officer: Adamovitch was laughing openly at him. Then they were all laughing openly at him. He heard their derision, and a red rain danced one moment before his eyes; when the red rain was past, Kozak was sitting back easily, regarding him with the expression of a man who has just been swung at and missed and plans to use the provocation without undue haste. The captain didn't look like the sort who'd swing back wildly or hurriedly. He didn't look like the sort who missed. His complacency for a moment was as unbearable to the boy as Adamovitch's guffaw had been. He heard his tongue going, trying to regain his lost composure by provoking them all. “Hey, Stingy whiskers l" He turned on the reporter. “Get your Eversharp goin’ there, write down I plugged the old rumpot, write down Bicek carrier 1 rod night 'n day 'n don't care where he points it. You, I go around slappin’ the crap out of whoever I feel like—” But they all remained mild, calm, and unmoved: for a moment he feared Adamovitch was going to pat him on the head and say something fatherly in Polish. “Take it easy, lad,” Adamovitch suggested. “You're in the query room. We’re here to help you, boy. We want to see you through this thing so’s you can get back to pug¬ging. You just ain’t letting us help you, son.” Kozak blew his nose as though that were an achieve¬ment in itself, and spoke with the false friendliness of the insurance man urging a fleeced customer toward the door. ‘Want to tell us where you got that rod now, Lefty?” “I don’t want to tell you anything.” His mind was set¬ting hard now, against them all. Against them all in here ana all like them outside. And the harder it set, the more things seemed to be all right with Kozak: he dropped his eyes to his charge sheet now and everything was all right with everybody. The reporter shoved his notebook into his pocket and buttoned the top button of his coat as though the questioning were over. It was all too easy. They weren’t going to ask him any¬thing more, and he stood wanting them to. He stood wish¬ing them to threaten, to shake their heads ominously, wheedle and cajole and promi$e him mercy if he'd just taJk’4U2qut:tK$ “I ain’t mad, Captain. I don't blame you men either. It's your job, it's your bread *n butter to talk tough to us neighborhood fellas^-ever’body got to have a racket, 'n yours is talkin' tough.” He directed this last at the cap¬tain, for Comiskey and Milano had left quietly. But Kozak was studying the charge sheet as though Bruno Lefty Bicek were no longer in the room. Nor anywhere at all. “I'm still here,” the boy said wryly, his ljp twisting into a dry and bitter grin. * Kozak looked up, his big, wind-beaten, impassive face looking suddenly to the boy like an autographed pitcher’s mitt he had once owned. His glance went past the boy and no light of recognition came into his eyes. Lefty Bicek I felt a panic rising in him: a desperate fear that they weren’t L going to press him about the rod, about the old man, about B his feelings. “Don’t look at me like I ain’t nowheres,” he asked. And his voice was struck flat by fear. Something elsel The time he and Dropkick had broken into a slot machine! The time he and Casey had played Ef the attention racket and made four dollars! Something! ft Anything else! The reporter lit his cigarette. “Your case is well disposed of,” Kozak said, and his eyes Hi dropped to the charge sheet forever. “I’m bom in this country. I’m educated here—” ® But no one was listening to Bruno Lefty Bicek any ft more.'. He watched the reporter leaving with regret—at least : the guy could have offered him a drag—and stood waiting f for someone to tell him to go somewhere now, shifting I; uneasily from one foot to the other. Then he started slow- jfe:, ly, backward, toward the door: he’d make Kozak tell & Adamovitch to grab him. Halfway to the door he turned K his back on Kozak. There was no voice behind him. Was this what “well ft disposed of” meant? He turned the knob and stepped confidently into the corridor; at the end of the corridor he saw the door that opened into the courtroom, and his heart began shaking his whole body with the impulse to I make a run for it. He glanced back and Adamovitch was* five yards behind, coming up catfooted like only an old man who has been a citizen-dress man can come up cat¬footed, just far enough behind and just casual enough to l make it appear unimportant whether the boy made a run B, for it or not. The Lone Wolf of Potomac Street waited miserably, in the long unlovely corridor, for the sergeant to thrust two fingers through the back of his belt Didn’t they realize I that he might have Dropkick and Catfoot and Benkowski i with a sub-machine gun in a streamlined cream-colored I roadster right down front, that he’d zigzag through the courtroom onto the courtroom fare escape and—swish- down off the courtroom roof three stories with the chop¬per still under his arm and through the car's roof and into the driver's seat? Like that George Raft did that time he was innocent at the Chopin, and cops like Adamovitch had better start ducking when Lefty Bicek began making a run for it. He felt the fingers thrust overfamiliarly be¬tween his shirt and his belt. A cold draft came down the corridor when the door at the far end opened; with the opening of the door came the smell of disinfectant from the basement cells. Outside, far overhead, the bells of St. John Cantius were beginning. The boy felt the winding steel of the staircase to the base¬ment beneath his feet and heard the whining screech of a Chicago Avenue streetcar as it paused on Ogden for the traffic lights and then screeched on again, as though a cat were caught beneath its back wheels. Would it be snowing out there still? he wondered* seeing the whitewashed base¬ment walls. “Feel all right, son?” Adamovitch asked in his most fatherly voice, closing the cell door while thinking to him¬self: “The kid don’t feel guilty is the whole trouble. You got to make them feel guilty or they’ll never go to church at all* A man who goes to church without feeling guilty for something is wasting his time, I say.” Inside the cell he saw the boy pause and go down on his knees in the cell’s gray light. The boy’s head turned slowly toward him, a pious oval in the dimness. Old Adamovitch took off his hat. “This place'll rot down *n mold over before Lefty Bicek starts prayin', boobatch. Prays, squeals, 'r bawls. So run along ’n I'll see you in hell with yer back broke. I'm lookin’ for my cap I dropped is all.” Adamovitch watched him crawling forward on all fours, groping for the pavement-colored cap; when he saw Bicek find it he put his own hat back on and left feeling vaguely dissatisfied. r \; jdjjS He did not stay to see the boy, still on his knees, put his hands across his mouth and stare at the shadowed wall. Shadows were there within shadows. “I knew I’d never get to be twenty-one anyhow,” Lefty told himself softly at last.

ShortSoriesinEnglish