Manhattan Noir

THE NEXT BEST THINGBY JIM FUSILLI

George Washington Bridge

He was a nasty bastard and everybody knew it, but she fell for him anyway. He had blue, blue eyes and he knew how to take his time and, of course, she loved the way he played piano. She thought everybody loved the way he played piano.

She didn’t know he’d been run out of Kansas City and that he worked in Jersey because he couldn’t cut it on 52nd Street, up at Minton’s or at the Café Bohemia in the Village. One time, she followed him to Broadway, knowing Bud Powell was playing Birdland, and she cozied up to him at the bar between sets and slid her hand onto his broad shoulder. He turned hard, his face going blank with a pure, powerful rage. Taking it simple, figuring he didn’t want her catching him doing something or hearing something he didn’t want her to know, she slid off the stool, pushed through the chattering crowd and walked back downtown, and she never asked why. She was learning it was better to let him be.

They were in Hell’s Kitchen, and she wore a slip, and his scent surrounded her like mist, and one evening she said, “Maxie, do you ever-”

“No,” he said as he brushed his shoes. Maxie put on his shoes before his trousers, and she liked that too.

Later, he slipped the straight razor into its leather sheath, dusted his face and neck with Pinaud talc, and headed out to Port Authority for the 8:05 bus to Fort Lee. Three sets at the Continental Lounge for six bucks a night and whatever ended up in the brandy snifter. He would’ve done better in tips if he wasn’t such a nasty bastard. He had those blue, blue eyes.

Maxie had his shot, but it didn’t take, and soon he was just another guy with his hat in his hand.

He wasn’t going to get a gig in New York City. He knew that before he caught the train. His old man called it from the day Maxie was born. A gristled rail, an Okie to his soul, he used to sit by the Franklin stove, wind whistling through the shack, and as firelight danced on his sorrowful face, he’d say, “Man was born to fail, son. There ain’t no way around that.”

Thumbing, he made his way to Missouri, thinking it’d be all right. But Bird told him kindly he couldn’t play, so he hustled and found work with the Benny Walters band, passing through K.C., their pianist coming down with shingles. But soon every musician and big-time booking agent was hearing how Maxie had taken off Bippy Brown’s left ear with a.22. Bippy had a mouth on him, but it was Maxie who got the gate, Benny bouncing him in a diner outside Chickasha. Maxie could’ve walked home.

He’d arrived at Pennsylvania Station with thirty-eight cents in his pocket, figuring if he was going to fail, he’d make it look like he failed at the top.

Big, big city, he thought, as he stepped into the sun, catching a breeze from the IND running below. Buzz buzz buzz, and he looked up at the Empire State, and then at the Western Union Telegraph building in the distance. Yeah, a real metropolis, he thought, as he spit through his teeth onto Eighth Avenue. They got a bank on every corner.

A merciless winter and he caught a cold, and she made him hot lemonade and brought a therapeutic lamp to his two-room flat.

By then, he was set at the Continental, and she thought he’d hung the moon.

He’d sleep until 11 and walk until supper, and sometimes she’d eat with him. He liked the steam-table dives, so she said she did too.

He was the first man she knew who didn’t babble about her red hair or the birthmark under her left breast. He hadn’t hit her, at least not yet, and somebody taught him to keep himself neat, and that was new too. She thought there might be more to him, even after the lanky Mexican woman from downstairs started dropping in, leading with sympathy when she’d asked for none.

At night, she’d go up to the Gaiety for a rye and ginger ale, killing time before he returned from Jersey, and pretty soon the stories, all with the ring of truth. Maxie lifted a gold-plated lighter from the bouncer at the Onyx, Maxie took a sap to the doorman at the Stuyvesant Casino, Maxie tore up a joint on the Bowery over a ten-cent pig’s feet-and-potato dish.

The black-eyed Mexican beauty said Maxie was itching to get himself killed.

“Honey,” Maria said, “this man hate himself. You can no love somebody who hate himself.”

She ran her fingers through Mitzi’s red hair, called her Margarita.

Slumped on the divan, Mitzi listened, listened, and she rested her head against Maria’s hip.

She’s right, she thought. Ain’t it always the way?

Maria kissed the top of her hair, traced her ear with her thumb.

Mitzi heard Maria singing through the floorboard. Always something sweet, proud, and tragic. Always in Spanish.

Soon, they were spending afternoons in Maxie’s bed, Maria toying with the tufts of hair below Mitzi’s baby paunch, Maria exploring; the two of them soaking through the sheets. Mitzi arching her back, tingling like her soul was being stroked, smiling as she wiped away warm tears, as she met soothing kisses from Maria’s salty lips.

Later, after barefoot Maria slipped away, Mitzi quickly washed her face, washed under her arms, brushed her teeth with his Ipana powder. She sprinkled Pinaud talc on the pillows and opened the windows wide.

The rubes under the George Washington Bridge didn’t know a damned thing about much, most of all music, so he gave them some Van Heusen Sinatra brought to life. The rest of the time he riffed on the chords to “I Got Rhythm” and the I-IV-V blues Jay McShann showed him, figuring that right there covered most modern jazz.

When they applauded, he saw chimps, the kind they teach to roller-skate, to wear a fez and smoke a cigar.

He let his mind drift when he played, and he was back in K.C. with all that dough, telling them how he made it at the Three Deuces, up at Small’s Paradise, stared down the shadow of the great Tatum, knocked Al Haig on his ass.

He’d already decided it was going to be one of those banks, all marble, cathedral ceilings, gold-leaf lettering on the windows, pens on chains.

Payday, early, before they came by to cash their checks, while the vault still swelled with dough. And a crowd on the street so the weary ex-cop drowsing amid all that marble and all that money don’t come out blazing.

Every day he walked until supper, and in time he scoured the city.

And he found it: the North River Savings Bank, a block west of Macy’s and Gimbel’s, maybe a thousand people working between the two. The bank had a piano in the lobby, some heeb with glasses murdering Richard Rodgers.

Maxie followed the little guy home.

A stretch of cord flung like he was roping a calf. Stomped him into shock, his wrists wrecked, elbows all but ground to dust.

He quit the Continental, calling from a booth in the bank’s lobby.

Maria was looking to borrow the iron, and she knew Maxie was gone, hearing his brood steps on the stairs.

She let herself in, and she found Mitzi hunched over the bed, angrily cramming clothes into a cardboard suitcase. Crying like she should’ve known better.

“Margarita?” Maria said, shutting the door. “Mi amor, what?”

“No, no…”

Maria turned her, wrapped her arms around her, waited until she lifted her chin.

“What? What did he do?”

“He-oh Maria, he-”

A man at the bank, a vice president, a sucker for redheads, always was. Liked a good time, and didn’t mind laying out for quality. Winked at Maxie when he said he liked to come and go, and Maxie winked when he passed it on.

“A vice president…” Maria thought about it. “That son of a bitch.”

Mitzi whimpered.

Maria never liked him. A musician who didn’t have records and didn’t play the radio, not even to study, did not love music and did not have pride for his own gifts.

Going after the money: it’s what they did when they knew their talent fell short.

“You are nobody’s whore,” Maria said, as she kissed her tears.

Not for a good long while, Mitzi thought. Not since Maxie.

Maria nudged her toward the divan.

Mitzi, one, two, three steps and everything moving under red rayon.

“You go no place,” Maria began, kneeling now. “Here is you home.”

She murdered English, but she was damned smart and she saw it in Technicolor. Jazzman takes a gig in a bank, cozies up to a vice president, maybe the one with the key to the vault, the combination. Mr. Moneybags.

“This vice president. He is a married man?”

Mitzi wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I guess. Maxie says he’s got a pencil mustache.”

Maria looked into her hazel eyes, gave her nipple a playful twist. “It’s the woman’s curse. To fall for the stupid man.”

“Oh Maria,” she moaned, “ain’t I ever going to learn?”

“I tell you, chica. Leave everything to me.”

Mitzi leaned back, stared at the tin ceiling. She expected Maria’s hand on her thigh, thinking what a man might do, claiming his reward.

Instead, Maria stood, went for the bottle of rye in the kitchenette, the Hoffman’s ginger ale on the window sill.

Mitzi opened her eyes. “Maria…?”

“Margarita,” she said, “I tell you: Leave everything to me.”

He started showing up a half hour before the bank opened, and the tellers liked his serenade almost as much as his blue, blue eyes, and he brought black coffee for Puckett, knowing the ex-cop made him for the nasty bastard he’d become.

Puckett had to piss before he took a second sip.

“You holding out on me, Maxie?” asked the vice president, jaunty when he passed the Steinway. “Keeping that redhead for yourself?”

“Looking for twins, Mr. Minthorn,” he replied, toying with the waltz from “Carousel,” playing it in 4/4 time.

Maxie broke for lunch at 2 o’clock.

Maria walked in eight minutes later.

Seated beside Minthorn’s desk, legs crossed, with his eyes fixed on the underside of her brown thigh, she made her pitch.

“But a man like you knows this,” she added. “A man in your position.”

Flattery, and the way she said “position”: lips pursed, her tongue peeking between her teeth for the little hiss.

And Minthorn knew she was right. A bunch of people from Macy’s and Gimbel’s who cashed their checks were from the islands, janitors and bus boys and such, and they needed to bank somewhere. To have someone to greet them in Spanish, to help them, a gentle twist of the arm…

“Whatever it is you invest, you make back quick,” she said.

“And someone as lovely as yourself to grace our branch…”

Maria pretended to blush, bringing her tapered fingers to her throat.

He hired her immediately, hoping her sense of propriety would wither in time.

She waited outside the bank on Eighth Avenue, shivering as the lunchtime crowd rushed by, their shopping bags brimming.

Coming back from Child’s, Maxie turned onto the avenue, topcoat collar high, and he looked right at her as he pushed the revolving door to enter the heated lobby.

She saw he hadn’t recognized her, and she knew it was going to be all right.

Find where Maxie kept his gun, look at the spot every morning when he leaves for the bank, and tell Maria when the piece was gone. Find where Maxie kept the gun, look at the spot every morning, and tell Maria…

The butterflies in her belly, prickle in her neck and chest, the way time stood still when she was gone: They all told Mitzi that she’d do whatever Maria said.

Never occurred to her that Maria might do her wrong like everybody else she’d fallen for.

Maxie’s gun rested beneath his array of socks, each pair rolled in a tight ball, diamonds on the ankles.

And then it was gone.

Wrapped in a thirsty robe, Mitzi went downstairs, drawing toward Maria’s lilting voice.

“It’s gone,” she said.

Maria in a black slip, and she was rolling up her hose. “He leave the same time?”

Mitzi nodded, and she watched as Maria went to her closet, brought out a dress in indigo-blue.

“Is it going to be today?” Mitzi asked.

“No, no, mi amor,” she replied as she slipped into the garment, stole a glance at the clock on the nightstand. “The money comes late this afternoon. Tomorrow. Has to be.”

“Should I be… Should I be scared?”

Maria wasn’t due at the bank until 10, but she found Minthorn liked it if she showed up early.

“No, you just do what we said.”

Maria pecked her cheek, then erased the lipstick trace. “Margarita, don’t think,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“Okay, Maria.”

A moment later, Mitzi was alone.

She sprayed Maria’s perfume into the air, and stood beneath the cloud of flowers, summer songs, a feathery sway. For the rest of the day, Maria’s scent clung to her fingertips and her red hair.

Mitzi felt like a heel stealing Maxie’s valise, but Maria said he wasn’t going to need it, and besides, he left it behind, dumping it like he was dumping her.

He took his razor, though. Took his ties, a shirt, two pairs each of boxers and those diamond socks too, and she saw him packing the night before last, one eye open under the covers, carefully stuffing the duffel he’d bought. Spent a long time looking at his cocoa suit in the closet, fingering the sleeve, and she knew he hated like hell to leave it behind.

Mitzi lifted the slacks, figuring what the hell.

Kerchief knotted under her chin, she went down the stairs, everything she owned in the valise but the therapeutic lamp and her old cardboard suitcase, and she was thinking a handful of talc might’ve captured the sweat soaking under her arms, running along her ribs.

She looked at Maria’s door.

Maria said Pennsylvania Station, 9:18. Track 101, Baltimore, and to stay put even if the seat next to her was empty when the train pulled out.

Maria had given her a ticket, and as Mitzi stepped onto the avenue, the cold stinging her face, she tapped her pocket, felt the envelope. Tapped it twice more for luck.

Baltimore to D.C. to Shreveport via Roanoke, Chattanooga, and Birmingham.

Maria said she always wanted to drive to Texas, said they’d cross the border at Eagle Pass. Said she had a brother in Salinas.

Baltimore would’ve been enough for Mitzi, leaning into the wind, a bitty thing under buildings pricking the clouds. She’d never been south of Battery Park.

Maxie had ice-water veins, never regretted shooting off Bippy Brown’s ear and now he didn’t give a damn about nothing. In less than an hour, he’d be back at the Hotel New Yorker using his real name, Mr. H.J. Blubaugh, having them deliver eggs, sunny-side up, and hash browns too.

Puckett thanked him for the container of black joe, and Maxie sat on the piano bench to remove his galoshes, putting his hat and topcoat on the case, wondering if he was going to have to kill anybody to get it done.

Wick, the senior teller, was already at her station, puckered lips, rouge, and all business, and then the Mexican broad entered, head held high.

The ex-cop walked across the lobby, falling in behind the Mexican on his way to the can.

Maxie eased the gun from the piano bench and dropped it into the side pocket of his blue suit jacket. As he went toward the locker room, he saw Minthorn opening the vault door, grunting.

The Mexican broad was sitting at her desk under the stairs, and she was still wearing her coat.

Puckett pissing away behind a door to the men’s room.

Maxie opened his locker and saw that his duffel bag was gone, and his clothes.

On the shelf, a record: “Moonlight and You” by the Benny Walters Orchestra, cornet solo by Bippy Brown, back when he had two ears.

Maxie felt a jolt, but he already had it spent. “Fuck it,” he said, charging out.

Puckett thought he heard someone call his name.

Passing Minthorn and the open vault, Maxie marched around the counter, and the tellers looked at him, wondering, thinking, Maxie…?

He grabbed the startled Wick by the meat of her arm, yanked her off the stool, rammed the.38 against her spine, and told her he didn’t give a shit if he had to kill her now or later, just keep her mouth shut.

She said, “See here, Maxie-”

Maxie, a nasty bastard, didn’t have a free hand to clap her, so he bit her hard on the back of her neck, drawing blood.

“Ready to shut it now?” he said, as he spit to the side.

They advanced toward Minthorn, who was stacking the cart with thick packets of bills and a fat bag of coins.

Puckett backed out of the toilet, and then he looked at Maria who, with a wide-eyed nod of her head and a sideways glance, told the ex-cop what was going on.

Puckett drew his side arm, held it shoulder high. He stayed under the stairs as Maxie and Wick passed the final teller.

“Minthorn,” Maxie said.

The vice president turned and, no panic, lifted his hands in the air. And then he said, “Maxie, let her go. Maxie, she’s got three kids.”

Maxie released Wick’s arm, grabbed her hair by the bun.

Wick hissed, but didn’t scream, blood dribbling.

“Maxie, for Christ’s sake, take the money. Just let her-”

Puckett squeezed the trigger.

Out of the corner of his blue, blue eyes, Maxie saw it, saw how the whole thing was going to end.

The bullet in the air, and he remembered it was Bird who gave him his nickname. Bird dubbed him Mum, since he didn’t yap much, and then Bird, as well read as anybody and twice as quick, upped it to Maximum, calling him Maxie.

He loved Bird, and he hightailed it to K.C. full of hope, thinking he could play, thinking what he’d learned in the basement of the Kingdom Hall-

Puckett’s shot took off the back of Maxie’s head.

Wick went to her knees, the red mist finding her easy, and Minthorn charged out of the safe to catch her, failing when he bumped the cart.

Maxie collapsed to the marble floor like somebody cut his strings.

Minthorn took Wick in his arms. “Muriel?”

She told him she was okay, and the color rushed back to her face.

Puckett holstered his gun and pushed back the swinging door.

Maxie’s blood was spreading fast.

Minthorn said, “Muriel, let’s get the girls into my office.” Looking at the ex-cop, “Frank, don’t trip the alarm. Just keep the front door locked and wait for them outside. I’ll make the call.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Minthorn,” he said as he turned, started toward the piano bench, the revolving door on Eighth, steam still rising from his coffee container.

Minthorn shepherded Wick and the quaking tellers, and then they were all inside, grateful they no longer had to see Maxie, the nasty bastard, with the side of his skull blown off, his blue, blue eyes rolled up into his head.

Minthorn pulled the blinds all around his office, cutting the light until he reached the desk lamp.

On cue, Maria took Maxie’s empty duffel bag from her drawer and went to the open vault, as Minthorn had agreed.

Minthorn, spent and on his side last night at the Hotel Martinique, and Maria, naked beneath his shirt on the chaise, telling him about Cuba. After a stopover in Miami, she said, they’d lounge on golden beaches, rum concoctions in their hands, and there wasn’t a banker on the entire island who would fail to believe he’d won the $202,000 at the casinos.

She stretched out her long legs, giving him a peek at the dark patch under the shirt front, and Minthorn quivered at the thought of her on white sheets after a day in the sun.

Referencing Maxie, she said, “He won’t know what to do when he has to face a man like you, Morris.”

There was no counting how many ways a line like that would work on a dope like Minthorn.

The 9:18 to Baltimore lurched forward, jostling the last of the passengers to board. Mitzi turned one last time to the rear. Maxie’s valise sat next to her atop the empty seat on the aisle.

She’s not coming, Mitzi thought, as she wrapped her kerchief around her finger, unwrapped it, all but tied it in knots. I’m sent off, again, only this time it’s to Baltimore with two dollars and change in my purse.

Ain’t it always the way?

She started thinking she’d get off in Newark, grab a couple of bucks on a refund, figuring they had a subway or some kind of ferry would take her back to Hell’s Kitchen, knowing Maxie was paid up until New Year’s.

As the clattering train began to find its pace, she thought, maybe there’s a guy in Baltimore. There’s got to be. A real nice guy, and she’s new in town, and he can see she’s had it rough. He’s got a job, something regular, and he’s kind. Buys her a drink, then the blue-plate special, a refill on the coffee, and everybody in the diner says he’s kind, a gentleman-

“Excuse me, miss. I can have this seat?”

Maria smiled, looking down.

She seemed awfully composed, considering.

“I can put your valise with mine,” she said.

Brand new, brown leather, and without a single scratch.

Mitzi figured the money was locked inside.

“Okay,” Mitzi said, and she watched Maria allow the porter to hoist the two pieces, and her coat, into the overhead compartment.

“Your coat now, miss?” asked the colored porter, sharp in a black bow tie and vest.

“No,” Mitzi said, as Maria nestled next to her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll keep it.”

They met sunlight in Jersey, and Mitzi leaned over, whispered, “Did you hurt him?”

Maria looked at the red trim on the seat in front of them. “No, chica, I did not.”

“The money…”

Outside, miles of tracks on all sides, maybe twenty ways to come and go.

Maria tapped Mitzi’s hand. She’d booked a sleeper for the overnight to Birmingham, and they’d count the dough on the bed, if the girl insisted.

Maria figured it was $200,000, seeing that she left the coins.

Minthorn thought she was waiting at the Hotel Martinique. He said he’d arrive around noon, passport in his pocket.

She told him she had a brother in Camagüey.

Her turn to whisper, Maria said, “The next tunnel I’m going to kiss you, Margarita. I’m going to kiss you until you no can breathe.”

Mitzi blushed.

“There is no one between us now, baby,” Maria added. “Now you are mine alone.”

They rode in silence for a stretch, pulling into Newark, pulling out. “Trenton next,” bellowed the roly-poly man.

Factories on either side, most of the way. Mitzi wondering if they had an ocean in Baltimore. Be nice to swim in an ocean.

She didn’t know what to call the feeling inside. No, but it was like it was all the other times at the start. She wondered if it could be different in the long run.

“Maria? Maria, will you be nasty?”

“Que? ”

“I mean, are you ever nasty?”

Maria looked at her with her black, black eyes.

“I told you, Margarita: Don’t think and don’t worry,” she said softly. “Leave everything to me.”

Mitzi studied her, trying to figure out how she could ignore the passing scenery, puffy smoke billowing from towering chimneys, a silver airplane growing bigger. Christmas lights, and little backyards with snowmen, coal buttons, carrots, corncob pipes.