“No,” Rudolph said.
“You’re going to have a rough time from now on, Rudy,” Axel said. “I’m sorry. I tried to do my best.”
“I’ll get by,” Rudolph said. He wasn’t at all sure he would.
“Go for the money,” Axel said. “Don’t let anybody fool you. Don’t go for anything else. Don’t listen to all the crap they write in the papers about Other Values. That’s what the rich preach to the poor so that they can keep raking it in, without getting their throats cut. Be Abraham Chase with that look on his face, picking up the bills. How much money you got in the bank?”
“A hundred and sixty dollars,” Rudolph said.
“Don’t part with it,” Axel said. “Not with a penny of it. Not even if I come dragging up to your door starving to death and ask you for the price of a meal. Don’t give me a dime.”
“Pa, you’re getting yourself all worked up. Why don’t you go upstairs and go to bed. I’ll put in the hours here.”
“You stay out of here. Or just come and talk to me, if you want. But stay away from the work. You got better things to do. Learn your lessons. All of them. Step careful. The sins of the fathers. Unto how many generations. My father used to read the Bible after dinner in the living room. I may not be leaving you much, but I sure as hell am leaving you well visited with sins. Two men killed. All my whores. And what I did to your mother. And letting Thomas grow up like wild grass. And who knows what Gretchen is doing. Your mother seems to have some information. You ever see her?”
“Yeah,” Rudolph said.
“What’s she’s up to?”
“You’d rather not hear,” Rudolph said.
“That figures,” his father said. “God watches. I don’t go to church, but I know God watches. Keeping the books on Axel Jordache and his generations.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Rudolph said. “God doesn’t watch anything.” His atheism was firm. “You’ve had some bad luck. That’s all. Everything can change tomorrow.”
“Pay up, God says.” Rudolph had the feeling his father wasn’t talking to him anymore, that he would be saying the same things, in the same dreamlike dead voice if he were alone in the cellar. “Pay up, Sinner, I will afflict you and your sons for your deeds.” He took a long drink, shook himself, as though a shiver had run coldly through his body. “Go to bed,” he said. “I got work to do.”
“Good night, Pa.” Rudolph took his coat off the hook on the wall. His father didn’t answer, just sat there, staring, holding the bottle.
Rudolph went upstairs. Christ, he thought, and I thought it was Ma who was the crazy one.
II
Axel took another drink from the bottle, then went back to work. He worked steadily all night. He found himself humming as he moved around the cellar. He didn’t recognize the tune for a while. It bothered him, not recognizing it. Then he remembered. It was a song his mother used to sing when she was in the kitchen.
He sang the words, low,
His native tongue. He had traveled too far. Or not far enough.
He had the last pan of rolls ready to go into the oven. He left it standing on the table and went over to a shelf and took down a can. There was a warning skull-and-bones on the label. He dug into the can and measured out a small spoonful of the powder. He carried it over to the table and picked up one of the raw rolls at random. He kneaded the poison into the roll thoroughly, then reshaped the roll and put it back into the pan. My message to the world, he thought.
The cat watched him. He put the pan of rolls into the oven and went over to the sink and stripped off his shirt and washed his hands and face and arms and torso. He dried himself on flour sacking and redressed. He sat down, facing the oven, and put the bottle, now nearly empty, to his lips.
He hummed the tune his mother had sung in her kitchen when he was a small boy.
When the rolls were baked, he pulled out the pan and left them to cool. All the rolls looked the same.
Then he turned off the gas in the ovens and put on his mackinaw and cap. He went up the steps into the bakery and went out. He let the cat follow him. It was dark and still raining. The wind had freshened. He kicked the cat and the cat ran off.
He limped toward the river.
He opened the rusty padlock of the warehouse and turned on a light. He picked up the shell and carried it to the rickety wharf. The river was rough, with whitecaps, and made a sucking, rushing sound as it swept past. The wharf was protected by a curling jetty and the water there was calm. He put the shell down on the wharf and went back and got the oars and turned out the light and snapped the padlock shut. He carried the oars back to the wharf and lay them down along the edge, then put the shell in the water. He stepped in lightly and put the oars into the outriggers.
He pushed off and guided the shell out toward open water. The current caught him and he began to row steadily out toward the river’s center. He went downstream, the waves washing over the sides of the shell, the rain beating in his face. In a little while the shell was low in the water. He continued to row steadily, as the river ran swiftly down toward New York, the bays, the open ocean.
The shell was almost completely awash as he reached the heart of the river.
The shell was found, overturned, the next day, near Bear Mountain. They didn’t ever find Axel Jordache.
PART TWO
Chapter 1
1949
Dominic Joseph Agostino sat at the little desk in his office behind the gym with the newspaper spread out in front of him to the sports page, reading about himself. He had his Ben Franklin reading glasses on and they gave a mild, studious look to his round, ex-pug’s face, with the broken nose and the small, dark eyes under the heavy scar tissue. It was three o’clock, the mid-afternoon lull, and the gym was empty, the best time of day. There wouldn’t be anything much doing until five o’clock when he gave a calisthenics class to a group of club members, middle-aged businessmen most of them, fighting their waistlines. After that he might spar a few rounds with some of the more ambitious members, being careful not to damage anybody.
The article about him had come out the night before, in a box on the sports page. It was a slow day. The Red Sox were out of town and weren’t going anyplace, anyway, and they had to fill the sports page with something.
Dominic had been born in Boston, and had been introduced in his fighting days as Joe Agos, the Boston Beauty, because he lacked a punch and had to do a lot of dancing around to keep from getting killed. He had fought some good lightweights in the late twenties and thirties and the sportswriter, who was too young ever to have seen him fight, had written stirring accounts of his matches with people like Canzoneri and McLarnin, when Canzoneri and McLarnin were on the way up. The sportswriter had written that he was still in good shape, which wasn’t all that true. The sportswriter quoted Dominic as saying jokingly that some of the younger members of the exclusive Revere Club were beginning to get to him in the sparring sessions in the gym and that he was thinking of getting an assistant or putting on a catcher’s mask to protect his beauty in the near future. He hadn’t said it all that jokingly. The article was friendly, and made Dominic sound like a wise old veteran of the golden days of the sport who had learned to accept life philosophically in his years in the ring. He had lost every cent he’d ever made, so there wasn’t much else left but philosophy. He hadn’t said anything about that to the writer and it wasn’t in the article.