A Bad Man

7

I’11 explain the operation,” Manfred Sky told him when he reported to the canteen. “Mr. Flesh is my assistant. And Walls here is in charge of stock. You’re his assistant.”

Feldman nodded. Walls was arranging packages of gum in a pyramid.

“You had a department store on the outside. That’s very impressive.”

Feldman shrugged.

“No,” Manfred Sky said, “it’s nice. Hey, Walls, this guy had a big department store on the outside. What do you think about that?”

Walls whistled.

“You had a thing like that going for you,” Harold Flesh said, “and still you had to fuck around. It don’t make sense.”

“Leave him alone, Harold,” Sky said. “You don’t know anything about it. Maybe he was framed. Were you framed, Leo?”

“In a way,” Feldman said.

“You see, Harold? In a way he was framed. Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions.”

“He’s got a blue suit on,” Walls said.

“I look at the man, not the suit,” Sky said. Sky was wearing a dark suit with white, thickish, diagonal pin stripes. The pin stripes were not straight, but abruptly angled like bolts of lightning in a comic strip. It was difficult to look at him.

“Still,” Walls said. Walls wore a bright pink polo shirt and Bermuda shorts. They seemed perfectly normal except that there were neither buttons nor zipper on his open fly. It was difficult to look at him too.

“The operation,” Harold Flesh said impatiently. There seemed nothing unusual about his apparel. He wore the grayish sweat suit that was the normal prison uniform. Catching Feldman’s glance, Flesh spoke irritably. “It’s cashmere. All right?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s cashmere. My uniform. And like yours it don’t fit. All right? Satisfied?”

“We just look funny,” Walls said, “but Harold smells funny. When he sweats — the cashmere — it’s terrible.”

“Shut up, Walls,” Flesh said.”

“I was just telling him,” Walls said defensively. “He’d find out anyway,” he added.

“All right,” Sky said, “all right, let’s settle down here. Let’s not kill each other. Let’s leave that to the authorities who get paid for it. Come on, Leo here wants to know about the operation.”

“I pile the chewing gum, that’s the operation,” Walls said. “I make it in neat stacks.” He giggled, and Flesh walked over and knocked his pyramid down.

Feldman, surprised, heard Manfred Sky laugh. “Come on,” Manfred Sky said — he was still laughing—“what kind of impression do you guys think you’re making?” He turned to Feldman. “Tell them the impression they’re making.”

“It’s an impression,” Feldman said neutrally.

“;Mind your business,” Walls said from the floor. He was gathering up the gum that Flesh had tumbled. “I ain’t making any impressions on nobody, you fat bastard. How do you know you ain’t making an impression on me? How do you know that? The truth is you are. I’m down here on my hands and knees, picking up chewing gum, and there’s a draft in my crotch, and you’re making an impression on me. It’s not a good one.”

“Walls,” Sky said.

“It’s not a good one, Manfred. A blue suit is a blue suit.”

“All right, all right,” Sky said. Harold Flesh had drifted off toward the rear of the canteen — it seemed to be several converted four-man cells — and was thumbing through inventory slips. “I’m going to explain the operation if it kills me,” Manfred Sky said.

Feldman, who was uneasy, wished he would begin.He looked as wide-eyed as he dared at Manfred Sky.

“First of all,” Sky said, “you’ve got to imagine it’s a gigantic, permanent depression, and everyone’s on relief. Everyone. That’s this place. These guys don’t have any money. They use prison chits. The state pays them three-fifty a month, after taxes, for the work they do here. Almost everybody gets the same.”

“Some get more?” Feldman asked, surprised.

“Some get less,” Sky said. “You do, I do. All the bad men.”

“That’s not fair,” Feldman said. “That’s not legal.”

“It’s for our costumes,” Harold Flesh said, plucking at his cashmere sweat shirt. “They dock us for the labor and the special material. They get another five dollars from the outside if their family comes up with it. It’s credited to their accounts. I suppose you won’t have any trouble about that if you’ve got a department store.”

“That’s right,” Walls said, “in the department-store department he’s all fixed.”

“You’re a clown, Walls,” Harold Flesh said.

“You’re a clown too, Harold. We’re all clowns.”

“I won’t go on with it, okay?” Sky said dramatically. “I’ll stop right there.”

’No, Manfred, tell him,” Walls said.

“No. You guys want to crap around, crap around. Go on. I’ll just sit here with my mouth shut.”

“The conniver in conniptions,” Harold Flesh said.

“The dissimulator digusted,” Walls said.

“The piker piqued,” Harold Flesh said.

“That’s enough,” Sky told them. He turned to Feldman. “I cheated the poor,” he said. “I nickeled-and-dimed them. Widows and grandpas, the old and the sick. I reduced the reduced.”

“Oh Christ,” Flesh said, bored, “explain the operation, Sky.”

“This is the operation,” Sky cried, wheeling. “What do you think? This is the operation. There are fortunes in doom and dread. Look,” he said, staring at Feldman, holding him, “during the war—”

“We’ve heard all this, Manfred,” Flesh said.

“During the war — everything I touched. Gold! The things I sold. Amulets. To send to their boys so they wouldn’t be hurt. And privilege. I made my collections. Like the insurance man I went around from scared door to scared door. I sold a policy to the parents, the wives — Prisoner-of-War Insurance, ten dollars a week. People are stupid, they don’t know. They think, when they’ve nothing, that things are controlled. They believe in our money. Theirs only buys bread, but ours can buy fate. I told them I worked through the international Red Cross, that their boys would be safe as long as they paid. They couldn’t afford not to believe me. That’s where the money is. Where people gamble because they can’t afford to take the chance.”

Sky closed his eyes. “Ah,” he said heavily, “I never had any confidence in my generation. I thought we’d lose the war. I’m here today because we won.”

“This all came out at the trial,” Walls said wearily.

Sky opened his eyes. “Well,” he said, suddenly cheerful, “forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones.”

“Guilty as charged,” Walls said.

Flesh — the tough one, Feldman guessed — snickered.

“All right,” Sky said, “you keep the accounts. Is that okay?”

“Whatever you say,” Feldman said.

“I say Freedman,” Walls said suddenly.

“I say Victman,” Flesh said.

“All right,” Sky said, “I say Dedman!”