A Good Story and Other Stories

You Put on Some Weight

He was out, and it felt great. His name was Charles Lambaski, alias Charlie Lane, alias Chuck Lewis, alias Jack Kent, and he’d just done four and a half of a ten-year bit for armed assault.

Prison life had agreed with him in a way, filling him out, so that at thirty-two he looked a bare twenty-five. He was just over six feet tall, and weighed a hundred seventy-eight, very little of it fat. His face was square, with a jutting jaw and a square chunk of nose and wide-set eyes beneath heavy straight brows. His black hair was in a prison crewcut, but pretty soon he’d have a wave back in it and it would be the way it used to be. Everything would be the way it used to be.

He was on a train, coming from the prison into Grand Central. They’d given him the ticket and a suit of clothes and ten bucks and the name of a parole officer he was supposed to go see. The parole officer’s name had gone out the window the minute the train was under way, and Charlie had sat back and let his mind drift backward four and a half years. It was as though all those years had never been. It wasn’t four and a half years ago, it was yesterday, and he’d had a bad dream last night about picking up a two-bit assault rap. And now the dream was over, and he was on his way back. It was great.

When the train reached Grand Central, Charlie walked off, no suitcase, and took a cab downtown to the old stamping grounds. The cabby complained about breaking the ten, but he did it. Then Charlie walked into the diner on the corner.

The counterman was new’. He looked at Charlie and said, “Yessir?”

“Wally around?”

“Who’s looking for him?”

“Charlie Lambaski.”

“I’ll take a look.”

Charlie sat down at the counter. It felt funny, having to tell the counterman who he was. Four and a half years ago everybody had known Charlie Lambaski. But there was no sweat. Most people would remember him. And the new people would learn the name fast.

Wally came out from the kitchen, a short round guy in a dirty white apron, looking more like the assistant cook than the owner. His round face was wrinkled into a big smile, and he said, “Charlie! Good old Charlie!” And he pumped Charlie’s hand.

“Good to see you, Wally.”

Wally looked him over critically. “You’re looking good, Charlie,” he said. “You put on some weight.”

“A few pounds,” Charlie admitted.

“You want your bankbook?”

“Yeah. I’m flat.”

“Come on to the kitchen.”

Charlie followed the short man into the kitchen, and waited while Wally Addled with the dials of the small safe over in the corner. Wally got the safe open, took the bankbook out, slammed the safe, and handed the bankbook to Charlie. “There you are, just like you left it. Only with interest. I brought it around to the bank every once in a while and they put the interest in.”

Charlie looked in the bankbook. Over six grand. Great. Enough to live on until he got back in the groove. “Thanks for holding it,” he said.

“Anything for a pal,” said Wally. “Want a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks. I got a lot to do.”

“Sure thing.”

Charlie started away, then turned back. “Andy at the same place?”

“No, he moved about two years ago. Wait a second, I’ll write the new address down for you.”

Charlie waited, then took the slip of paper, thanked Wally again, and left the diner. He grabbed a cab, read the address to the driver, and then sat back and thought about Andy.

Andy had been his partner. They’d worked together almost all the time, doing jobs for Corsi, who was mixed up in a little bit of everything, so that their jobs weren’t too closely defined. One time they’d be collecting from a narcotics retailer who was behind in his payments. Another time they’d be helping organize some small downtown union. Another time they’d be discouraging some clown who thought he could muscle into Corsi’s territory. It was a varied and interesting job, without a lot of dull desk work, and except for the rare solo gig like the one he’d been picked up on, it had always been him and Andy all the way.

It was going to be like that again. Charlie was looking forward to it, getting into the old groove. First he’d check in with Andy, maybe stay at his place for a day or two until he got squared away, then find an apartment somewhere and let Corsi know he was available for the payroll again. Back to the old life, sweet and easy.

Andy lived on 47th Street, way over on the west side. Charlie was surprised at how rundown the neighborhood was; Andy’s old place had been a lot better. Down the street there was the 16th Precinct, which Charlie remembered from a couple pickups in his youth. It was next to a grammar school, which was maybe a good idea.

Charlie went into the building. There was no elevator, so he climbed the stairs to Andy’s third-floor apartment. He pushed the buzzer, and after a minute Andy opened the door, stared at Charlie for a second, and then broke into a big smile, shouting, “Charlie!” He stepped back, throwing the door wide open. “Come on in, you old son of a gun!”

Charlie walked in, grinning back at his partner. Andy hadn’t changed a bit. He still looked seventeen, was still wiry, underweight. He was only five foot seven, and most guys thought he was a shrimp and nothing much to worry about, until they tangled with him.

Andy closed the door and they stood in the small crowded living room and looked at one another. Andy said, “Charlie, you old son of a gun.”

“Hiya, Andy,” said Charlie.

“Let me look at you,” said Andy. “You put on some weight, boy.”

“A little.”

Andy said, “Sit down, sit down. Want a beer?”

“Yeah, I would. I haven’t had a beer in four and a half years.”

“I’ll bring you two. Sit down, I’ll be right back.”

Andy hurried away to the kitchen, and Charlie looked at the living room. It was full of cheap furniture, overstuffed armchairs and a huge sofa and seven or eight end tables and a bunch of table lamps and floor lamps, like a corner of the Salvation Army store. It was a funny kind of place for Andy to be living in.

Andy came back with the beer, gave one to Charlie, then sat across from him and said, “Boy, it sure brings up old times, Charlie, seeing you again.”

“Here’s to old times,” said Charlie.

“Right.”

Charlie tasted the beer and it was great, cool and delicious, tickling his throat. He remembered all the nights in stir, dreaming about a cold can of beer and one thing and another.

Andy was saying, “What are your plans, Charlie?”

“Take it easy for a few days,” Charlie told him. “Then get back into the old groove. Think Corsi’ll put me back on the payroll?”

Andy looked surprised, “Didn’t you see Corsi upstate?”

“Upstate? You mean in the pen?”

“Sure. He went up about a year ago. There was some big stink about unions, there was Congressmen all over the place, and Corsi wound up in the big house.”

“I didn’t know about it. Who’s taking over while he’s gone?”

“I don’t know who’s running things now. I guess the combine’s pretty well broken up.”

“Aren’t you working any more?”

Andy laughed. “You been out of touch, Charlie. I quit the racket over two years ago. When I got married.”

Charlie stared at him. “Married?”

“Sure. It was due, Charlie. I had to settle down some time. It’s a good thing I did, or maybe them Congressmen would have been breathing down my neck, too.”

“Do I know her?”

“I don’t think so. Her name’s Mary. It used to be Mary Paulzak.”

Charlie shook his head. “I don’t think I know her.”

“She’s out shopping now, over to the A&P on Ninth. She’ll be back in a little while.” He got to his feet. “Come on, I’ll show you something.”

Charlie followed him through the apartment to a bedroom. Andy opened the door and stood aside for Charlie to look in. Andy’s face was grinning and proud.

Charlie looked in. There was a crib in there, and a kid in the crib. He was sound asleep.

“It’s a girl,” Andy whispered. “Her name’s Linda.”

“That’s great,” said Charlie.

They walked back to the living room and Andy said, “Another beer?”

“No, I really gotta get going. I still got to find a place to live.”

“Stick around and meet the little woman.”

“I’ll come back,” Charlie told him. “In a day or two.”

“You really got to rush?”

“I’m flat. I got to get to the bank before it closes.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see you later, Charlie.”

“Sure.”

“I’m in the phone book. Give me a ring when you’re settled.”

“Sure.”

“I work the four-till-midnight shift, so I’m not home evenings. Except Tuesday and Wednesday.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I drive a cab.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll see you around.”

“Sure thing, Charlie. It was great to see you again, boy.”

“It was great to see you, too, Andy.”

Charlie went downstairs and outside to the pavement. He looked both ways, but he didn’t see any cabs, so he started to walk. He went by the police station and the grammar school, and he felt kind of empty. This wasn’t the way he’d figured it.

He got a cab after a while and went over to the bank. He took five hundred out of the account, bought a copy of the Times, and went apartment-hunting. He found a pretty good place, up in the Seventies, on the east side. There was a self-service elevator. He was on the fifth floor, a two-room apartment with a private bath and a kitchenette, and windows looking out from the bedroom to the back of the apartment buildings on the next street over.

There was a fire escape back there, and he was glad. Fire escapes made good exits when there were people you didn’t like at the front door.

He left the apartment, after paying the landlord two months’ rent, and walked down to the drugstore on the comer. He called the phone company and arranged to have a telephone put in, then called a couple of people he knew, girls, but strangers answered the phone each time, telling him he had a wrong number, there was no one there by that name.

It was getting late. He had dinner in a restaurant and then went down to Corsi’s office. Usually, in the old days, the office didn’t open till seven or eight o’clock at night, and there were guys coming in or going out until one or two in the morning. The office was in a crummy little building on Lafayette Street, way down, so Charlie took another cab. He thought for a second when he climbed in that the driver was Andy, but it wasn’t.

There was nobody at the office. The lettering on the door said MYRON GREENBLATT, Import-Export. He left the building and walked over a block to Manny’s where the guys used to hang out all the time.

Manny was still there, behind the bar, looking as though he hadn’t come out from there since the last time Charlie’d seen him. He was exactly the same, short, bald, with a bullet head and no neck and thick pale lips that never smiled. He saw Charlie and said, “Hi. You’re back.”

“I’m back,” said Charlie. There were four or five guys draped on the bar, but he didn’t know any of them. “Beer,” he said.

Manny gave him the beer, gave him change for the five Charlie put on the bar, and said, “Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

“Four and a half years.” Charlie told him.

“That long? You look good. You put on some weight.”

“Some. Where’s all rhe guys?”

“The old bunch? Gone. Here and there. Up the river. Married. Moved on.”

“Nobody’s left?”

“I guess not.” Manny shrugged. “Every once in a while I see a face from the old days. Like you, tonight.”

“What happened?”

Manny shrugged again. “Some of the guys quit, got married, went to work. Some of them got hooked in that big Congressional investigation. Then we had a clean-up campaign and some of them moved out of town. Off to Chicago or Dallas or St. Louis or Reno or somewhere. New people came in. Things change fast.”

“Who’s running the bookies now?”

“Beats me. It’s a different kind of crowd comes in here now. The cops took to watching the place.”

A name came to Charlie. He said, “Sally Morrisey around?”

Manny shook his head. “She don’t hustle no more. She’s married.”

“Married?”

“I heard a guy say they make the best kind of wife.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You want another beer?”

“No. I... I got some people to see.”

“I’ll sec you around,” said Manny.

“Sure thing,” said Charlie.

He left the bar and walked along, aimlessly, trying to remember names and faces and people. Somebody had to still be around, somebody who could fill him in, tell him who the boss was now, where to find him, how to get back into the old groove.

A prowl car slid to a stop beside him and a cop got out of the right-hand door. He said, “Okay, buddy, hold on a minute.”

Charlie stopped and looked at him. He knew the cop, but he couldn’t remember the name.

The cop said, “Charlie Lambaski!” and he looked pleased.

“Hi,” said Charlie.

“When’d you get out?”

“Just today.”

The cop looked him over. “Jail must have agreed with you,” he said. “You put on some weight.”

“Yeah,” said Charlie.

“You walked across the street against the DON’T WALK sign back there,” said the cop. “That’s why I stopped you.”

“I didn’t notice it. I’m sorry.”

“I understand. You haven’t seen any signs like that for a while.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, Charlie, just a warning. We got an anti-jaywalking campaign on. If I felt like being tough, that walk could cost you two bucks.”

“I’ll watch it from now on,” Charlie told him.

“You do that. You got any plans yet, Charlie?”

“Not yet,” said Charlie. “I’m just getting moved in.”

“You better stay away from the old crowd,” the cop said. “You don’t want to get mixed up with them again.”

“I won’t,” said Charlie.

“Learned your lesson, huh?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, Charlie. Sec you around. I hope you make out good.”

“Thanks.”

The cop got back into the prowl car, and Charlie went on walking. At the next corner he waited till the light turned green, and then crossed. After a while he took a taxi home. For just a second the driver looked like Andy.

Charlie went into his apartment but didn’t turn on any lights. He walked through into the bedroom and lay down on the bed, kicked off his shoes and lit a cigarette. He felt around on the dresser beside the bed until he found an ashtray, then rested the ashtray on his chest and smoked’ and thought. Around him he could hear sounds. Strange sounds, nonprison sounds.

A baby was crying somewhere, and somewhere else a woman was screaming at her husband. The baby and the woman were both pretty far away and he could just hear them. Somebody else, a little closer, had a television set on and he could hear the audience laughing every once in a while.

Upstairs, people moved around and he heard the floor creak and crack under them as they walked. After a while he heard a door slam up there, and then there wasn’t any more moving around.

He put the cigarette out, and returned the ashtray to the dresser. He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the dark ceiling, and thought.

Nothing was the way he’d expected. Nothing was working out right. He felt lost, for some reason. Lost and lonely.

There was a sound at the window beside his bed. Charlie froze and listened, and somebody was moving around out there on the fire escape. He heard the window slide slowly open, and then the shade fluttered as somebody raised it from outside.

Charlie moved swiftly and silently off the bed. In his socks, he moved around the room and stood against the wall beside the window. All of a sudden he felt good. He didn’t know yet what was up, but he didn’t feel lost any more.

A form came through the window, cautiously but not too quietly. Charlie considered letting him have it, but then decided to wait. There might be more than one of them.

There was. A voice from outside whispered, “All clear?”

“All clear,” the guy inside said.

Then the second one came in, and closed the window behind him. Charlie waited until the window was closed all the way, but the shade still up, so he could see them both in the pale light from outside, and then he stepped forward and thumped them both, twice each, cold and efficient the way he used to do it. They both went down, and neither of them tried to get up.

Charlie pulled the shade all the way down to the windowsill and then walked over by the door and turned the light on. He took a look at his catch.

Kids, that’s all. They were both about seventeen, dressed in black jackets and dark blue levis. One of them was out cold and the other one was sitting up with a dazed expression on his face.

Charlie said to the one who was sitting up, “Wake your buddy. Slap his face.”

The sitting-up one slapped the other one’s face a couple of times, and then that one sat up too. They blinked up at Charlie, both scared and both trying not to show it.

Charlie said, “You kids taking a night course in burglary?”

They didn’t say anything.

“If you aren’t,” Charlie told them, “you ought to. You two couldn’t break into Macy’s on bargain day without getting picked up.”

One of the kids finally spoke up, saying, “You gonna call the cops?”

“For what? You two? You didn’t do anything, just gave me a little exercise, that’s all. Just go home and forget this second-story’ dodge, you don’t know the first thing about it.”

The other kid looked defensive. “So what do you know about it?”

“I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever learn.” Charlie pulled over a chair and sat facing them. “Look,” he said. “When the lights are out, that don’t mean there’s nobody home. What you do, you scratch at the window like a cat. You do it two or three times. If nobody shows up, then you take a chance and open the window. Just a little bit. Then you listen. You listen for breathing, meaning somebody’s in the room, asleep. You listen for somebody talking somewhere else in the apartment. You make sure the joint is empty before you go in. You got that?”

They nodded, slowly, wide-eyed.

Suddenly, Charlie had an idea. He got to his feet and pushed the chair back against the wall. He felt good now, he felt fine. The old tingling across his shoulders was there again, like when he and Andy were on their way to a job in the old days. Everything was going to be okay after ail.

“Listen,” he said to the kids. “The people upstairs just went out. Come on, we’ll go up the fire escape, I’ll show you how it’s done. Just a dry run. We don’t want to pull any jobs around here, this is headquarters and we don’t want any cops in the building. Come on.”

He started toward the window, then stopped and looked back at the kids. They were still sitting on the floor, and in their eyes was awe and admiration and respect.

He said, “You with me?”

They scrambled to their feet. “We’re with you,” they said.