“All right. No becktalks.” Nevertheless, Mr. Klein slowed down — slightly. “If you knew what I feel, you’d do everything on the double. It’s not enough once for them to be in that murder? Murder, and mud, and rats!”
One after the other, each of the four agents took turns walking around the opposite end of the cellar, even the agent supervising Tommy — and Tommy himself, and Murphy and Quinn. “Shikkerim!” said Mr. Klein. “A brukh uf zeh! Look! Look! Three on that elevator, and a double load whiskey.” He scowled at the elevator creaking upward. “This is Prohibition? S’ toigt shoyn uf a kapura.” He slapped his own cheek with the sheaf of invoices: “What am I worrying about? Let Park and Tilford worry. Baker’s chocolate. Hearts of palm. Butterscotch sauce. Coffee. Sugar. Yams, two cans. That’s another besket.”
Under Mr. Klein’s forceful dispensing, they made good progress. The second hamper for the customers was full and pulled out of the way alongside the first: They would be Quinn’s and Tommy’s delivery stint for tomorrow. The summit of the mountain of groceries on the counter had subsided considerably, subsided to a widespread heap. Now to fill Murphy’s big hamper for the east Bronx. That would leave only Shea’s smaller basket to take care of. Shea’s smaller basket was rarely filled all the way to the top, its contents destined for local stops.
“Oh, what has become o’ hinky dinky, parlez-vous? Oh, what has become of all the Jewish soldiers, too?” Quinn sang as he came down the stairs from the street— “All the sons of Abraham are eatin’ ham fer Uncle Sam, hinky dinky—” He passed in front of the table. “Them trucks’re goddamn near down on their springs,” he said out of the side of his mouth — and walked around toward the iceboxes. “Hinky, dinky, parlez-vous.”
XXVII
“
Ira,” Mr. MacAlaney called down from the top of the stairs leading up to the store. “You down there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know what the Camembert cheese looks like?”
“Yes, sir. It’s in a round wooden box.”
“Bring up a box.”
Conscious of Mr. Klein’s stern look following him, Ira left the table for the icebox. Quinn was there, and Tommy with a bottle of beer. At the sight of Ira, Quinn allowed himself a chuckle. Tommy proffered his bottle. “I can’t,” Ira grabbed one of the quaint wooden boxes of Camembert, “Mr. MacAlaney is waiting.”
“Don’t be a prick like Klein,” Tommy’s lips curled jaggedly, so Irish in crooked truculence. “Taste it. You ain’t a Jew like them others. Remember what I told you Christmas when we were deliverin’?”
“Ye’ll never git another chance,” Quinn rubbed his eyelids. “Not after today. Imported lager like that. Home brew’ll be all that’s around. Shnitz used to say it’s the only beer good enough for them thirty-six holy men that keeps the world goin’.”
“Hebrew an’ Homebrew,” Tommy quipped.
“Try it, Irey,” Quinn prodded.
Ira took a swallow, burbled lips in distaste, hurried off, their laughter trailing him. He climbed up the first steps, stopped short: on the top of the stairs, next to glinty-eyed Mr. MacAlaney waiting for his parcel, Mr. Stiles was talking to Harvey, who was leaning on the handle of his wide dry-mop. “No, I want you to do it this time,” Mr. Stiles was saying to Harvey. “Get the glass outta there. What is there? Three or four bottles broken. You can smell it all the way up to the store. There’s a law too about minors handling alcohol,” he concluded impatiently. “And with that elevator going up and down, he’ll forget to watch himself. You do it this time. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be glad when the stuff’s out of here.” Frowning, Mr. Stiles turned away.
Only too keenly aware of his own yeasty breath, Ira kept his head lowered, held up the box of Camembert, wished it smelled more, and as soon as Mr. MacAlaney relieved him of it, retreated down the steps. “Hoo!” he sighed noisily, returning to the table.
“Oy, a shvartz yur!” Mr. Klein exploded. “What have you been drinking? You stink like a vershtinkeneh zoo!”
“Tommy gave me some beer.”
“You’re a minor. You’re a schoolboy. You could get everybody in trouble! I told you to stay away.”
“It was only a taste.”
“Mr. Stiles should catch you! He’d give you a taste. He’d fire you.”
“Tommy’s drinking. Everybody!” Ira flared up.
“It’s none of your business. You’re working with me. Eat another cracker. I should see this booze outta here already.”
Quinn came around and headed for the elevator: “Take it easy, Klein,” he grinned indulgently. “Don’t git your bowels in an uproar. We’ll be skidooin’ outta here soon. Oh, mademoiselle from gay Paree, parlez-vous. Oh, mademoiselle from gay Paree, what a hell o’ dose she gave to me, hinky, dinky, parlez-vous. Them fuckin’ snipers. How come Shnitzel took a drink an’ you don’t, Klein?” He grinned, made for the elevator pit. And reaching the wall, he lifted his hand to the wall-button: “Hey, up der! Ready for me to bring her down?”
“Hold ’er a second till I git the truck on,” came Murphy’s answering cry.
“Say when,” Quinn waited with upraised hand.
His displeasure smoldering on his dark features, Harvey came down the stairs, crossed in front of the table.
“You gonna go under the elevator?” Ira asked.
Harvey fixed Ira with an irritated glance, kept on his way.
“Gee, he’s sore,” Ira said under his breath. “He’s gotta do my job, I bet.”
“No, it’s whiskey bottles on the bottom,” Mr. Klein admonished sharply. “Pay attention. A peckage rusk. A peckage pralines. A whole Gouda—” he sniffed it. “It’s all right. We can peck it with the rest. It’s local. Haguda.” He handed the string-bound cheese to Ira. “You know from the haguda? Mah nishtanu he laila hazeh?”
Harvey reappeared carrying the familiar bucket and flat shovel — as the cry came from the street: “Let ’er go, Quinn.”
“Ever see Senegalese troops, Major?” Murphy raised his voice above the creak of the elevator beginning its descent.
“Senegalese? You mean black Senegalese? I may have. I saw about every kind in France.”
“They look like monkeys in frog uniforms.”
Quinn tilted his head slowly in oblique look at Harvey.
“I don’t think I ever saw ’em in action?” Two pairs of knees came into view.
“Action. That’s a good one!” At hip-level, Murphy shifted the handtruck. His uproarious laugh crested the elevator’s drone. “Weren’t they corkers! We’d have ’em on our right, and as soon as the Heinies knew they had the Senegalese in front, they’d attack. You never heard such a squealin’ an’ scramblin’. They’d leave a hole big enough fer a regiment.”
“Is that right?”
“Maybe they’re runnin’ yet.” Murphy’s rocky face came into view under the elevator lintel. “They could be all the way to Africa—” He spied Harvey waiting with bucket and shovel — and cleared his throat with a peculiar sound, as if he were warning the major — who was already aware. For a moment or two only the elevator’s creak was heard in descent, and then when the platform was still inches from the cellar floor, Murphy shoved the handtruck forward. Steel wheels banged on concrete. “It’s okay, Harv. I was just talkin’.”
“You’re talkin’ about colored people. They just as brave as any white man.” Already annoyed by the prospect of his task, Harvey’s features became like basalt. The nails on his outspread fingers gleamed. “I’ve seen lots o’ whites shit in their pants when they come under fire. Don’t tell me about bein’ brave. The enemy fired at us. We fired at them.”