The Neon Jungle

Chapter Six

Rick Stussen, the big fat blond butcher, thought of himself as an amiable man who, through no fault of his own, had got into a mess that seemed destined to get steadily worse until, finally, the whole world was going to blow up in his face. He spent a lot of time thinking about it. He would sit in his small back room on the ground floor of the Varaki house and he would tell himself that he would think his way out of this jam. And each time his thoughts would veer off into the past, and he would wonder how on earth this could possibly have happened to him. And sometimes he would cry. At such times the sheaf of bills hidden behind the loose section of baseboard was no comfort.

He was forty and he didn’t know where the years had gone. He had come into the store when he was sixteen, when Walter had been a little kid, toddling around and getting into things. At sixteen, as now, he had been big around and blond, with rather small pink hands. He’d lived up on the third floor then, because the store took up most of the downstairs. Those had been the good years. From sixteen until the war came.

It had made him a part of something. And before that he had been a part of nothing. A part of gray yards where it always seemed to rain, and you were always lining up for something, and the sisters rustled when they walked. You cried when you were hurt, so the others were always finding new ways to hurt you.

Coming to be a part of the Varaki family was different. It was being a part of something. You could get out when you were sixteen if you had a job.

The bad years came right after he went to work, a year or two later. That was when Gus almost lost the store, and there was just Gus and Mom and him to handle everything.

It was good to be a part of everything and work hard and watch the kids growing up, Walter and Henry. Teena didn’t come along until later. He always got along fine with the kids. Helping out. Staying with them when they were small and Gus and Mom wanted to go out.

He hadn’t wanted it all to change. And that was the funny thing. People were always pushing on you, trying to push you out of the one place you’d found where everything was warm and soft and safe, and there wasn’t any hurting.

The only hard thing had been getting used to the people in the store, coming in to buy. Gus had kept after him until he learned how you had to do it. Keep smiling and talk loud, and say something about the weather and try to remember their names. It wasn’t too hard after you got onto it. It made you feel like you were hiding. You were hiding behind a big smile and a loud voice. He remembered the first few times he had been alone in the bathroom and happened to look in the mirror and see that big smile there, without even thinking about it.

It was Mom who kept pushing at him. “You got to get a girl, Rick. You got to go out. You got to get a girl and get a family.”

“Sometime,” he would say, smiling. “Sure. Sometime.”

She had kept it up until he thought maybe it was the thing to do. She was a neighborhood girl. She was the only one he sort of liked the looks of, because she had a thin clean look. He remembered how hot his face got when he asked her for a date. They went out about six times. He didn’t touch her. She seemed to like him. They laughed and smiled and joked around. And the Varakis kidded him about her. It was the sixth time they went out. The last time. He took her up on the porch and he was going to talk about the movie. She reached up and caught his shoulders and pasted her mouth hard on his, shoving herself against him. He flung himself wildly away from her so that they both nearly fell. She stood and didn’t say anything. The hall light shone from behind her. She looked at him and then she went inside. She and her whole family stopped trading at the store. He couldn’t tell Gus and Mom what had happened. It kind of scared him and made him half sick at the same time. Like the way he had scared himself a long time ago, back in that place. One of the sisters slapped him hard and he had to wear those bright red gloves for punishment for two days, even at meals. The mouth of the girl was somehow mixed up with the shame and the red gloves. So after a while they stopped talking about any girls.

He was drafted when he was thirty and sent to Fort Devon, where he spent two and a half years cutting meat in demonstration classes. It wasn’t as bad as that place, but almost as bad. He made sergeant and got a room to himself, which helped some. He kept and used the smile and the laugh and the big voice. It would have helped if he had known that long ago. He didn’t make any friends. He wrote Gus and Mom and the kids once a week. Teena was about seven then, Henry was twelve, Walter about sixteen.

Somehow it was all different when he got back. It had never been the same again. Somehow, in the two and a half years, he’d lost some important thing that had been there before the war. Something was barely out of his reach. The work was the same. He was a good butcher, and he knew it. Better, even, than Gus. The house was the same. They were all just farther away from him. He would sit with them in the small upstairs living room and feel closed out as he sat and smiled and nodded at things they said. It made him feel funny and he’d go up to bed, or go out and just walk. He wondered if the Army had made him restless or something. Like in that lecture they gave you when they discharged you.

He walked a lot and he was alone a lot. He had never been able to get any pleasure out of reading. So when he wasn’t walking, working, sleeping, or eating, he would sit in his room.

There was a lot of work when the new store was built. It was as though building the new store had made things start to happen. Start to happen too fast. Mom got sick and died. Then that Vern Lockter came and took the delivery job. Walter quit his post-office job and came back with Doris, who never smiled back when he smiled at her. And he could hear them fighting a lot. Henry went in the Army. Anna, who never talked, came to cook and clean. Gus married Jana. Henry’s wife came to stay. Henry got killed. Things were happening too fast and he wanted to hold out his hands and stop them.

But the bad trouble, the nightmare trouble, started after Vern Lockter came to work. At first it seemed fine. It seemed as though he was really going to have a friend, someone to talk to, the way Vern kept coming to his room and talking to him. He didn’t seem like the kind of young fellow they’d put in jail. Vern would come and sit around in his room and make a lot of jokes. Rick couldn’t understand all of them, but he always laughed anyway. And Vern used a lot of words Rick had never heard before. It was funny the way, at first, he had felt as though Vern was just a young fellow, and the way it sort of changed so that, unless he stopped and thought, it was like Vern was older. He told Vern a lot about himself. He told him about how it was in that place, long ago. And how it was before the war. And about his job in the war and all. He talked about how they used to hurt him back in that place. He started telling Vern how it was with the girl, but Vern started looking at him so sort of funny that he tried to make a joke out of it.

He couldn’t remember exactly how he started going around to places with Vern. Vern had a lot of friends, all right. Vern taught him a lot of things. How to bowl and all. Then there was that place they started going, playing the five and ten poker game. Once he caught on to the game, he liked it. He liked spreading the cards real slow so that they came into view one by one.

It was all a lot better than before Vern came. He still couldn’t see why Vern hadn’t warned him that night about the game. It was in a new place. Vern had said he felt lucky and they went to the new place for poker. It was fixed up nice, with green on the table and chips that felt good. There were four men playing. They didn’t say much. They looked important. Vern said it was a private club.

One of the men said, “Twenty-five and fifty all right for you gentlemen?”

Vern took Rick Stussen’s arm and led him aside. “Think you can stand that?”

“Sure. Sure, I can stand it, Vern.”

“Be lucky, then, big boy.”

It was a real quiet game. The man who had spoken was banker. He handed Rick and Vern each a stack of chips. Rick reached for his money, but the man said, “We’ll settle later, Mr. Stussen.”

“Sure,” Rick said, smiling. “Sure thing.”

Rick was worried about the stakes, but when he took the first pot with a king-high flush, he began to feel more expansive. He won another pot, and then there was a long spell of poor hands and his chips melted away. When he was way down, the banker handed him two more stacks, one of reds and one of blues, and marked the paper again.

He saw that Vern would lose and then win. All the men played intently. Rick’s second batch of chips melted slowly away, with the temporary respite of only one small pot. The man gave him a third batch, and Rick said, with nervous apology, “My luck keeps up like this, I better make this the last batch.” He figured that at twenty dollars for each batch of chips, a sixty-dollar evening was pretty expensive.

“Maybe you ought to quit now,” Vern said, looking worried.

“Maybe Mr. Stussen’s luck will change,” said the banker. He was a small man with a red face and fluffy white hair. There were purple veins in his cheeks and on his nose.

“I’ll try one more batch,” Rick said.

And the last batch began, dismally, to melt away, eaten up by the antes, lost in the purchase of cards that didn’t help a pair.

When there were only a few chips left in front of him, the man on Rick’s left dealt. He dealt very swiftly. Rick picked up his cards and spread them slowly. Ace, three, Ace, Ace. His throat felt tight. He slowly spread the last card until he could see the denomination. Ace. Give me some play on the hand, he said to himself. Give me some play on the hand.

The man on the dealer’s left opened. Vern, the next player, stayed. The next man folded. The banker stayed. Rick said, “Just for luck I got to nudge that a little.” He tossed out two blue chips.

The opener said softly, “I’m proud too. Back at you.”

“I thought I opened this pot,” the next man said. “Let’s freeze out the ribbon clerks.” He raised.

Vern tossed his hand in and said, disgustedly, “That makes me a ribbon clerk.” The next two men stayed.

Rick said, “I better have another batch, please.”

The man handed the chips over, marked the paper.

Rick said, “I’ll try it again.”

The dealer didn’t raise again. He groaned and stayed. The opener raised again.

The man to the left of Vern who had folded earlier said, “Too rich for my blood, gentlemen.”

The banker stayed and Rick, gloating inwardly, raised again. It was the last raise permitted him. The opener had one more raise coming. He used it. The banker stayed in and Rick stayed in. There were four of them left in. The dealer, the opener, the banker, and Rick.

“Cards, gentlemen?” the dealer said.

“I’ll play these,” said the opener.

“Pat hands make me nervous,” said the banker. “I’ll take one, please.”

“One for me too,” said Rick, discarding the trey.

“Opener bets,” said the dealer, giving himself one card.

After the draw, the limit was two blue chips, three raises per player. Rick thought the dollars were landing out there in the middle with a pleasant abundance. The dealer folded immediately. Rick and the banker and the opener were left. The banker raised, Rick raised, the opener raised, the banker raised. It was two dollars to call. Rick put in three. Each man took his full quota of raises. As the opener was the last raiser, and both the banker and Rick called, he spread his hand and said, “Four delightful little tens, gentlemen.”

The banker spread his hand. A flush.

“Four bullets,” Rick said joyously, slapping them down. He reached for the pot. The banker encircled his wrist with small cold strong fingers. “A little fast, Mr. Stussen.”

“What’s the matter? Four aces beats tens, beats a flush.”

“This kind of a flush, Mr. Stussen. Look again.”

Rick looked again. He had missed it because they weren’t in order. A three, four, five, six, seven of spades. Straight flush.

“A rough one to lose, Mr. Stussen,” the banker said. He raked in the chips. They clattered into the wooden bin in front of him. “Very rough.”

“I’m done,” Rick said dully.

“I think I’m done too,” said the man who had dealt. “We can’t top that hand. Let’s all settle up.”

“What have you got left there, Mr. Stussen?” The banker asked.

Rick looked down. He felt dazed. “Three blues. One red. One-seventy-five.”

“And you, Mr. Lockter?”

“My original stack and five blues.”

“Two-fifty, then.”

“That was a terrible beating,” Vern said to Rick.

Rick forced a smile. “Four stacks I lost. All but one-seventy-five.”

“Here you are, Mr. Lockter,” the banker said. He snapped the bills as he counted them out. “One, two, three, four, five. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rick smiled broadly. By God, that was a good gag. Nobody seemed to notice his smile. Everybody seemed intent on the mathematics. Two of the other three players paid the banker. The man who had just dealt was paid off in hundreds and in fifties, to the amount of twelve hundred and fifty dollars, while Rick sat, still smiling automatically.

“I seem to be the big winner,” the small white-haired banker said. “Mr. Stussen?”

“What?”

“Your liability seems to be exactly seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

“I don’t... I can’t...”

They were all looking at him. He swallowed hard and smiled and said, “It was... like a mistake, I guess. I thought it was twenty-five cents. Fifty cents.” He swallowed again and laughed. Nobody else laughed. “I haven’t got that kind of money.”

“I told you the stakes, for God’s sake!” Vern said.

“Cents, you said, Vern. Cents!”

“I said dollars. Hell, I thought you could stand that. You told me you’ve been saving dough ever since you were sixteen.”

“In the savings account I’ve got eleven hundred, almost.”

The banker looked different. He didn’t look as nice and friendly. His eyes were different. “People just don’t do that to me, Stussen. They never have and they never will.”

“Do what? Do what?”

“Come in here and try to make a killing without the money to back your losses. Nobody gets away with that I think, Lockter, you better take your absurd friend over in a corner and tell him the facts of life.”

Rick went over into a corner with Vern. Vern said, “My God, you played stupid! I thought you knew. Hell, I’ll toss in my two-fifty, but that isn’t going to help much. What have you got on you?”

“Fifty-two dollars, Vern. Honest.”

“Don’t you know who that guy is?”

“I forget his name.”

“Karshner. They call him the Judge. He’s never been any judge. He works for a very big guy in this town. The biggest. Karshner snaps his fingers and some boys come take you out and bury you in quicklime, Rick. Get your hands off me and stop blubbering.”

“What am I going to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’ll get a break. Maybe they’ll just put you in the hospital for a long stay.”

“Why? It was a mistake. I didn’t know. Why?”

“Just as a lesson to somebody else who might try the same thing. I told you this was a rough game. If you’d won, you’d have taken the money, wouldn’t you?”

“No. Just what I was playing for.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“It’s the truth. Honest to God.”

“You stay here. I’ll go try to talk to him. It isn’t going to do any good, but I’ll try.”

“Vern. You got to get me out of this. You got to.”

“Stop sniveling.”

He stood in the dark corner near a billiard table and watched Vern walk back toward the cone of bright white light over the green table and sit down. He couldn’t hear what was said. Suddenly the four men got up and walked out of the room, leaving Vern sitting there. Rick heard their voices, heard one of them laugh as they went down the stairs. Rick went cautiously back to the table.

“What... what did they say?”

“Oh, shut up!”

“Vern, you got to tell me.”

“Sure. I’ll tell you. I brought you here. So whatever you get, I get too, you dumb son. They think I was in on it.”

“But I’ll tell them it was just me.”

“Do you think they’d believe anything we say? Not a chance.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what they said. They said we should sit tight. They know where to find us. They’ve got an idea. It seems that there’s some friend of theirs needs a little help. If he can use us, then we can work it off that way. If not...” Vern shrugged.

“If not, what?”

“They send some experts around, Rick. Guys who know how to three-quarter kill you, and make the job last a long time.”

“I’ll do anything, Vern. Anything.”

That was a long time ago. Nearly two years ago. He knew he’d never forget the fear of those two days of not knowing. When Vern at last came and told him he’d been contacted, and it was decided they could be used, Rick almost cried with gratitude.

The job was simple. After the first delivery on Monday each week Vern would return to the store with a package he got someplace. He wouldn’t say where or how he got it. It was generally a small box, hardly bigger than a pack of cigarettes. In it was a bunch of little packets in the form of cylinders wrapped tightly in cellophane, fastened with layers of Scotch tape. He had to hide the little box somewhere around his working area. That wasn’t hard. There were lots of places. Inside a carcass in the walk-in cooler. Behind the slicer. Lots of places. What was hard was memorizing the list. Nine names at first. Nine little packets in the box each week. Vern made him say the names over and over until he could say them in his sleep.

It worked like this: A phone order would come in. Walter or Jana or Doris or somebody would take it. There would be a meat item on the order. It was written out, name and all, by whoever took the order over the phone. When he made up the orders on his spindle, whenever he came to one of the nine names, he would have to slice a small pocket in the meat and shove one of the little cylinders in there. Then he’d wrap and tie and weigh the meat and scribble the price and the name on the brown paper. The nine people always phoned in cash orders.

For the first week he was too overcome with relief to question what he was doing. It was enough that he had to keep anybody from seeing what he was doing, and keep remembering the names. But when the weekend came he found he had to know.

Vern wouldn’t talk in the house, so they went for a walk on Sunday, went to a park. It was a small park and they found a bench away from other people.

“Now what’s on your mind?”

“These little things in the meat, Vern. What are they for? What are we doing?”

Vern gave him a look of incredulous contempt. “Just how dumb are you, you big slob?”

“I’m sorry, Vern. I just wanted to know.”

“You ever hear of dope? Snow? Junk? Big H? Horse?”

“Dope? Sure. There’s dope fiends. They take dope and commit crimes. I know about that.”

“So what’s in the little packages?”

Rick stared at him. “Don’t you go to jail for giving it to people?”

“You go to jail if they find it in your possession, Buster.”

“Those nine people, then. They’re dope fiends?”

“No. No. My God, there’s enough in each package to... Look. I suppose you ought to know what you’re doing. That’s uncut stuff. Prime stuff. Those nine people are pushers. They handle retail. We’re in the middle, between the wholesaler and the pushers. Now making a meet is dangerous. That’s what they call it when the wholesaler contacts the pusher, gives him the stuff, and gets the money. It’s a cash-on-the-line business, all the way up and down. We’re working a gimmick. I figured it out. I mean, somebody else figured it out, that the most invisible guy in the world is a delivery man. I’ve got a reason for traveling all over the city. I go in a place with a big package of groceries. I’ve got money in my pocket because I collect, too. I’ve got a record. Suppose they shake me down. Are they going to dig around in a piece of raw meat? The cover is perfect. I don’t even take the order when it comes over the phone. The pushers pay me on the line, or I don’t leave the stuff. What they do then is their business. They cut it, cap it, and retail it at about a hundred percent profit — more, depending on how much they can cut it and get away with it. They use powdered sugar, other stuff. Rice flour. It’s a sweet delivery system, and they’re willing to pay for it. I mean, they’re willing to forget that little trouble we had.”

“Where does it come from?”

“We don’t have to worry about that, do we?”

“But it’s a bad thing to do, isn’t it? I mean that stuff does bad things to people, doesn’t it?”

Vern had clapped him on the shoulder. “You got to think about it this way: If we weren’t doing it, somebody else would be. Isn’t that right?”

“I... I guess so.”

Vern handed him three ten-dollar bills. “What’s this for?”

Rick asked.

“Put it in your pocket. They think we’re doing a good job. It’s a little present. I got one too. There’ll be a little every week.”

After that there was fifty dollars every week. He had a sort of superstitious fear about either banking it or spending it, so he put it behind the loose section of baseboard, in against a joist. The names he had to memorize changed. New ones appeared on the list. The number of names changed. Once it was up to twenty. Twice, for no reason given Rick, there was no box, no packets. Those times Vern acted nervous. And when it started up again, it started slowly. Two, then three, then five packets a week. Growing slowly up to more than a dozen while Vern’s good humor improved. Rick got so he could do it without thinking too much about it. He kept a few of the small shiny cylinders in his apron pocket. Some days there would be three names. Or one. Or none. He never played poker again. He did not go out at night with Vern any more. It made him nervous to be out at night. The shadows looked too black. Sometimes he dreamed about the man with the red face. Judge Karshner. The Judge sat on a high bench looking down at him, holding out a black cap, telling him to put it on and it would all be over.

The house and store had changed. Walter was sour and silent. The old man was gray-weary, lifeless, defeated — ever since the death of Henry. No one saw much of Teena any more. She was out late a lot. The new one, Bonny, was nice. Rick liked to look at her. He liked the way her hair looked, and he gave her his best smile. Henry married good, Rick thought. Not like that Doris.

The best part was when he was real busy. Fridays and Saturdays. Today was not good. Sunday. He sat in his room. The little radio made sad music, like water dripping. Gus had said a boy was coming to work tomorrow. A boy to help. That was good. There were things to do that Rick did not like. Cleaning up the trash, sweeping out, washing the big front windows, sorting out the bottle returns, fixing vegetable displays. The boy could go with Gus in the truck to the predawn farmers’ market at the north edge of town, carrying to the truck the things Gus bought after his good-humored haggling. There were always so many little things. Taking care of meat scraps. Cleaning the hamburg machine. Marking cans with the grease pencil. Keeping the paper-sack racks full. Keeping the glass on the front of the meat case clean. He remembered when he had first come there, how gladly he had done all the little things, how glad he had been to feel the warmth of family around him. It was all changed, all different. Now he was not Rick the boy. He was Rick the butcher, living in the small downstairs room behind the kitchen. He was forty years old.

And I am a criminal, he thought. I can go to jail. It would be like that place long ago, and like the Army. Long lines and gray rain and stone.

He sat on his bed on a Sunday afternoon in June. His small pink hands were clasped between his knees. There was a tin-foil quality to the Debussy that the New York Philharmonic served him through the three-inch speaker of the green plastic table radio. He did not know he was wearing his habitual smile. He thought of the baby Doris would have soon. Maybe it would change the house. Maybe it would bring back the warmth. Maybe it would make things like the old days. The big house seemed very quiet. Anna was not in the kitchen.

He looked across at the photograph tacked to the wall. The old store, with all of them standing in front of it. The three kids, Mom, Gus, Rick. All smiling. It seemed like they had all died long ago. The music was a sound like gray rain.