Martin and Morrie neared Pearl Street, the glimmerings of light from the cars giving them a fragmented view of the broken window in Wilson’s Jewelry Store. When they saw the window, they crossed Pearl. Martin looked down toward State and saw a torchlight parade coming north in support of the nomination of Millard Fillmore. The John G. Myers department store collapsed into itself, killing thirteen and making men bald from flying plaster dust. Henry James, suffused in the brilliance of a sunny summer morning, walked out of his grandmother’s house, opened the front gate, and floated like a flowered balloon into ethereal regions. Martin walked in the phosphorescent footsteps of his father and his grandfather.
“Where the hell are we walking?” Morrie asked.
“Just around,” said Martin. “You want to go back down?”
“I guess it’s all right.”
They walked to Clinton Square, where two more trolleys were stalled on the bend. A siren screamed and stopped, back near Steuben and Pearl. Martin and Morrie, their eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, watched the shadowy action in front of the Palace Theater, hundreds waiting to go back inside and see the rest of Boys’ Town with Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan, the miracle man. There is no such thing as a bad boy.
“They got some kind of light in the Grand Lunch,” Morrie said. “You want some coffee?”
“No, you go ahead. I want to watch the panic.”
“What panic?”
“There’s got to be panic someplace with this much darkness.”
“Whatever you say. See you down below.”
In the Sudetenland only last week when Hitler arrived, at nightfall there was an epidemic of suicide.
In France in 1918, Martin had heard a man scream from the darkness beyond a farmhouse where a shell had just hit. Help me, oh God, oh heavenly God, help me, the man yelled, and then he wailed his pain. Martin nudged a corporal and they crawled toward the voice and found an American soldier pinned between two dead cows. The top cow was bloated from inhaling the explosion. Martin and the corporal could not move the bloated cow so they pulled the squeezed man by his arms, and the top half of him came away in their grip. He stopped screaming.
Martin crossed Pearl and went into the K. of C. and called the city desk by candlelight. Viglucci said there was still no explanation for the blackout, but up at Harmanus Bleecker Hall the audience had panicked when the lights went. People shoved one another and Tip Mooney was knocked down and trampled.
Punishment.
“This bum’s a Cuban and so’s one of the broads,” said Morrie as Billy and Martin followed him down two slate steps to the basement doorway beneath the high stoop. Morrie rapped and the pimp peered out in his puce shirt, his hair brilliantined, his shoes pointed and shiny, both ends of him gleaming in the harsh backlight. The lights of the city had come back on an hour earlier.
“Hey, Mo-ree,” the pimp said. “Whatchou lookin’ for?”
“Pussy,” said Morrie.
“You in the right place.”
The pimp, the same man Red Tom threw out of Becker’s, had a face as pointy as his shoes and resembled Martin’s long-snouted animal child. Why should the likes of him concretize a Daugherty abstraction? But why not? Ooze to ooze, slime to slime. Brothers under the sheets.
Two young women sat at the kitchen table drinking sarsaparilla out of jelly glasses. Knives, forks, glasses, and dishes sat in the sink. The stub of a candle stood in a pool of dry wax on a saucer. The pimp introduced the girls as Fela and Margie. Fela, obviously La Cubana, was dark, with hair to her kidneys. Margie had carroty red hair, redder by blood weight than Mary Daugherty’s crop. Both wore brassieres, Woolworth couture, a size too small, shorts to mid-thigh, with cuffs, and high heels.
“They got shorts on,” Morrie said. “Last time I saw a whore in shorts was Mame Fay’s.”
“I know Mame,” said the pimp. “She’s got influence up in Troy.”
“She used to recruit salesgirls in the grocery marts,” Billy said. “She tried to hawk a friend of mine.”
“She’d give talks in the high schools if they let her,” said Morrie.
“Young stuff is what Mame likes,” Margie said.
“Yeah,” said Morrie, licking his lips.
“Talk is gettin’ hot, hombres. Young stuff right in front of you. Who’s ready?”
“Don’t rush me,” said Morrie.
Billy pulled up a chair between Fela and Margie and looked them over. Martin felt a thirst rising.
“You have any beer?”
“Twenty-five cents, hombre.”
“I’m a sport,” said Martin, and the pimp cracked a quart of Stanwix.
“Those broads up at Mame’s,” Morrie said, “took their tops off when we come in. I’m the best, one of ’em says to us, so take me. If you’re the best, says the other, how come your boyfriend screwed me? You? says the other. He’d screw a dead dog with the clap, but he wouldn’t screw you. And then they went at it. Best whore fight I ever saw. Bit one another, blood all over the joint, one of their heads split open. Me and Maloy laughed our tits off.”
“We don’t fight,” Margie said. “We like one another.”
“That’s nice,” said Morrie, and he put his hand inside her brassiere. “Soft.” He laughed, found a chair, and sat down.
“Maloy,” said Billy. “What the hell is he doing in Newark?”
“Who said he was in Newark?” Morrie asked.
“I thought you did.”
“He ain’t in Newark.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s someplace else.”
“How do you know he ain’t in Newark? I heard he was in Newark.”
“What the hell’d he be in Newark for?”
“Why not Newark?”
“He don’t know nobody in Newark.”
“This is a famous guy,” the pimp told the girls, putting his hand on Morrie’s shoulder. “His name’s in the paper this morning. They say that’s all about the kidnapping, right Mo-ree?”
“Billy’s name’s in there, too.”
“Very big men in Albany if the McCalls put your name in there,” said the pimp.
“You don’t like the McCalls,” Billy said. “They threw you out of Becker’s for bad-mouthing them.”
“I never like them,” said the pimp. “They make me a janitor at the public bath, then fire me.”
“What’d they do that for?”
“For nothing. A little thing. Look at the ladies and pull the old rope. They catch me and tell me I’m all finish. Little thing like that.”
“It ain’t against the law to pull your rope,” Morrie said. “It’s against the law to get caught.”
“It sure ain’t against the law here,” Margie said.
“Yeah, you boys come here to talk or screw?” Fela the Cubana said.
“Screw,” said Morrie, “and you got it, lady. Let’s go.” He stood up and tongued her ear and she knocked a jelly glass off the table. He took her down the hallway and into a bedroom.
“Hey, Mo-ree,” said the pimp, “she’s the best blow-job in town.” Then he told Martin and Billy: “Margie’s good too.”
“Is that right?” Billy asked Margie. “Are you good?”
“I ain’t had a complaint all week.”
Billy washed a glass in the sink with soap and water and poured himself a beer. The pimp came over to Martin.
“What do you like, Mister? Little blow from the best?”