Death Wish

12

Jack handed him the drink. “Prosit.”

He carried it to the couch and sat. “You think she’s really feeling better then.”

“Dr. Metz said he was encouraged.”

“They’re not going to use insulin shock?”

“He wants to hold off a little while and see if she comes out of it by herself.” Jack pulled a chair out and sat down with elbows on the dining table. A pack of cards sat neatly squared on the table; he had probably worn them out playing solitaire. He looked haggard. “I guess there’s nothing else to do. Just wait and see. Christ, but it doesn’t get any easier, Pop.”

“I know.”

“Watching her just sit on the edge of the bed like that, picking fluff...”

“I’d like to see her.”

“Believe me, it wouldn’t make you feel any better.”

“They’re excluding me from things, these doctors. There’s no sane reason for it.”

“Her reasons aren’t sane right now, Pop. But I’ll ask Metz, I’ll see what I can do.”

Paul swallowed a sulfurous comment. He knew if he kicked up enough of a fuss they would let him see her, but was there sufficient point to it? Yet in the meantime they were acting as though he were a poor relation with some sort of communicable disease. He was insulted. But Jack seemed too vulnerable; his eyes now pleaded with Paul not to ask him any more questions to which he didn’t have answers.

He set down his glass empty. He was doing a lot of fast drinking lately. Well it was understandable, wasn’t it; he wasn’t going to start worrying about that, there were too many other things to think about right now.

He knew what he wanted to ask Jack; he wasn’t sure how to lead into it. Finally he said, “I was attacked the other night.”

“You what?”

“A kid on the street. He had a knife. I suppose he wanted money.”

“You suppose? You don’t know?”

“I scared him off.” He took pride in saying it.

Jack gaped at him. “You scared...” It was unconsciously a comic reaction; Paul had to force himself not to smile. “For God’s sake, Pop.”

“Well, I suppose I was lucky. A Negro kid, probably not more than twelve or thirteen. He had a knife but he didn’t seem to know what to do with it. I yelled at him and started to hit him — I was mad clear through, you can understand that. I didn’t stop to think. I suppose if he’d known what he was doing I’d have been sliced to ribbons.”

“Jesus,” Jack whispered. He stared, not blinking.

“Anyhow the next thing I knew he was running away.”

“But — where’d this happen?”

“Right around the corner from the apartment. Seventy-fourth between West End and Amsterdam.”

“Late at night?”

“Not very late, no. It must have been around eleven.”

“What did the police do?”

“Nothing. I didn’t call them.”

“Christ, Pop, you should have—”

“Oh, to hell with that, I didn’t get much of a look at him. What could they have done? By the time I got anywhere near a phone that kid was six blocks away.”

“A junkie?”

“I have no idea. I guess it’s likely, isn’t it?”

“Most of them are.”

“Well, the truth is I was angry. I was madder than I’ve ever been in my life.”

“So you just started hitting the kid? Jesus, that’s a ballsy thing to do...”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking straight, obviously. I never landed a blow on him — he bolted and ran the minute I started to swing at him. I had a roll of coins in my hand, I suppose he mistook it for something more lethal.” Paul leaned forward for emphasis. “But suppose it hadn’t been a mixed-up kid? Suppose it had been a real tough?”

“You’re leading up to something, aren’t you?”

“Jack, they’re on every street. They jump people at five o’clock in broad daylight. They hold up subway cars as if they were stagecoaches. All right, it happens all the time, but what are we supposed to do about it? What am I supposed to do about it? Throw my arms up over my head and yell for help?”

“Well, usually if you just keep calm and give them the money they’ll leave you alone, Pop. All most of them want is money. There aren’t too many of them like the ones who killed Mom.”

“So we’re just supposed to turn the other cheek, are we?” He stood up abruptly. It made Jack’s head skew back. Paul said, “Damn it, that’s not enough for me. Not any more. The next time one of the bastards accosts me in the street I want to have a gun in my pocket.”

“Now wait a minute—”

“What for? Wait until the next mugger jumps me and decides to stick a knife in me?” He was on his feet and it felt stagey, foolish; for something to do he picked up his empty glass and carried it to the bar cabinet. He talked while he mixed a drink.

“Jack, you’re in with all the criminal lawyers, you know people in the District Attorney’s office. I want a pistol permit.”

“It’s not that easy, Pop.”

“I read somewhere there are half a million New Yorkers who own firearms.”

“Sure. Shotguns for hunting, mostly. The rest of them are mainly war souvenirs and rifles. A certain number of people own guns illegally, of course, but that’s a violation of the Sullivan Law — you could get sent up for twenty years for carrying a gun without a ticket.”

“What about all the storekeepers who keep pistols under their cash registers? What about them?”

“Pop, it’s a different kind of ticket. The Bureau of Licenses issues pistol permits in two categories — premises and carry. You could probably get a premises permit if you wanted to stow a captured German Luger in your apartment or something like that, but that’s totally different from getting a permit to carry a concealed weapon on the streets.”

“Then what about all these gangsters who’ve got licenses to carry guns?”

“It’s a corrupt city, Pop, we all know that. If you’ve got ten or twelve thousand dollars to spare to grease certain people, you can get a concealed-pistol permit. It’s not fair but it’s the way things work. It’s an outrageous price, but the Mafia can afford it and it protects them from the inconvenience of being run in on a weapons charge. But I never heard of an ordinary law-abiding citizen willing to spend that kind of money on a gun. Even if you did, it would make them suspect you were some sort of criminal. They’d start bugging your apartment and your phone and you’d live your whole life under surveillance. Is that what you want?”

“All I want is the machinery to defend myself.”

“Have you thought of moving out of the city?”

“Have you?” he countered.

“God damn right I have. As soon as Carol’s on her feet we’re getting out of this hell-hole. I’ve already started reading the real estate ads. You ought to do the same thing, Pop.”

“No. I thought about it. I won’t do it.”

“Why?”

“I was born here. I’ve spent my whole life here. I tried living in the suburbs. It didn’t work. I’m too old to change, I know my limitations.”

“But things aren’t the same as they were then, Pop. It used to be a place where you could live.”

It was a bilious tone he had never heard from Jack before; but he shook his head. “I won’t run. I just won’t.”

“Why the hell not? What’s keeping you here?”

It was too hard to explain. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be driven from his home by a pack of savages who weren’t fit to wipe his shoes. But how did you say that aloud without making it sound like a corny line from an old cowboy movie?

What he said was, “Then you won’t help me get a gun permit?”

“I can’t, Pop. I haven’t got that kind of clout.”

“And I get the feeling from you that even if you did, you wouldn’t use it. You don’t approve of the whole idea.”

“No. I don’t. I don’t think adding to the arsenal on the streets is going to help calm things down any.”

“It’s too late to calm anything down,” he said. “It’s about time we revived our self-respect, don’t you think? Nobody should have to walk down a public street half-paralyzed by fear that somebody could come leaping out of any doorway with a switchblade knife. Human beings just shouldn’t have to live that way.”

“And you think having a loaded gun in your pocket would give you back your self-respect and make you feel ten feet tall. Is that it?”

Now who sounds like bad dialogue from an old movie? But he didn’t laugh; Jack had neither the imagination nor the sense of humor to appreciate it.

Jack said, “You’re kidding yourself, Pop. Have you ever even handled a pistol in your entire life?”

“I was in the Army.”

“All right, so you were in the Army. You were a clerk-typist, not a combat infantryman.”

“We still had to qualify on the range. I’ve handled guns.”

“Rifles. It’s hardly the same thing. A handgun’s a very tricky job to handle, Pop. People who don’t know them very well are always blowing holes in their own knees. And what happens if you’re accosted by another man with a gun? What happens when he sees your gun? Christ, you’d get your ass blown off.” Jack spread his hands and ducked his chin toward his chest. “Look, you’d better forget the whole idea. Guns aren’t panaceas, Pop. Bullets never answered any questions.”

“I don’t want to ask questions. I want to protect my life. What is it in this day and age that makes that simple desire so incredibly immoral and wrong?”

He gave in because Jack wasn’t going to; there wasn’t much point prolonging it. He knew all the arguments to which Jack would resort; he had used them all himself, in the past. And to keep pressing the point would make Jack suspicious that perhaps Paul had something more than self-defense in mind.

On the way home he asked himself exactly what he did have in mind.

Revenge, he thought. It lay curled in the back of his mind like a poison snake.

But it was a meaningless fantasy, really. The police had got nowhere; they would never get anywhere. Esther’s killers were free and there wasn’t a chance in the world of anyone’s ever finding them. Sooner or later they would be arrested for something, but it wasn’t likely this crime would ever be pinned on them. No one knew who they were and there was no way to find out. So it didn’t matter, that way, whether or not you went armed in the streets; you’d never have a chance to take a shot at them. You wouldn’t know them if you walked right into them.

Still, he had wanted a gun. Jack’s advice was simple to disregard, but he did know the facts; it was a keen disappointment to find out how impossible it was to obtain a pistol license.

It was dark when he came up out of the subway. The fear settled in his bowels again when he walked the single crosstown block to West End Avenue. No one accosted him, he reached the apartment without incident; but he was covered with oily sweat.

I just don’t want to feel like this, he thought. Is it so much to ask?