You Bet Your Life

1

The narrow white pier pointed into Biscayne Bay like the finger of a rotting skeleton. The paint was peeling and the planks were soft under my feet from too many years of relentless salt water. A fat man sat or squatted at the far end of the pier-I couldn’t tell if there was a chair under him, because he was wearing a long white terrycloth robe that made him look like a soggy tennis ball. His back was to me as I approached, but I could see a thin fishing pole in his oversized fingers. He didn’t move. Dark clouds chased each other in the afternoon sky and the rickety pier danced with the white-topped waves. After a minute or two of watching him slowly being eroded by the Atlantic Ocean, I cleared my throat.

The fat man had to turn completely around to see me since there was no longer a clear separation between his head and neck, if one had ever existed. His face was a blank brown circle marred by a distinct dark scar that ran from below his left ear across his cheek. His eyes were as black as the sea behind him. An unlit cigar drooped in the corner of his thick mouth. He was almost bald, but a few strands of hair on top stood upright, comically blown by the warm wet wind.

“Mr. Capone,” I shouted over the surf. “My name is Toby Peters.”

The clouds had created a thick filter in front of the sun, but Al Capone cupped the chunky fingers of his left hand to shade an unnecessary squint as he examined me silently.

I turned back to the point where the pier touched the land and looked at the man who had led me there. His name was Leonardo, and I thought he might give me some idea of how to handle things. But he simply stood with his arms folded, listening.

“I’m a private investigator, Mr. Capone-”

Capone interrupted with a sound that reminded me of someone chewing sand.

“I didn’t catch that,” I said, wiping water from my brow and tasting sea salt on my tongue.

Capone’s answer was to turn away and fish again. I stood quietly for another minute or so while the waves and Florida humidity turned my light brown suit to moist black. A fish or mermaid tugged at Capone’s line; then it was gone. Capone reacted much too late by jerking the pole out of the waves. There was no longer any bait on the hook. He hit the water three or four times with the pole, hoping to split the skull of the unprepared fish.

“Bastard,” he mumbled, and began to fish again without bait.

It was 1941-February 19, 1941-and I was forty-four years old. The world was moving fast, a war was coming, and I was a private eye with one wet suit and fifty-six dollars in the bank. I imagined myself standing forever on this pier watching Al Capone fishing baitless while the salt of the sea calmly seeped through my undershirt. I almost fell asleep imagining it.

“Well?” said Capone, without turning around.

“A guy I knew said you might help me,” I said. Capone watched the water. “The guy’s name was Marty Maloney-Red Maloney. He was on the Rock with you.”

Capone said nothing. I thought he grunted, so I went on.

“I’m working for MGM, the movie studio, on something you might be able to help with. Chico Marx is in some gambling trouble, and-”

“I remember Red,” said Capone. “I don’t forget my friends. We used to look out at night at the water and see Oakland and the fishing boats, and I told Red when I got out I’d sit and fish outside and no one would tell me to stop.”

Capone looked up at the sky and watched two clouds separate to let the sun through for a second or two.

“I was in prisons for-I don’t know-six years. They tried to rub me out on the Rock-hit me with a pipe. One time a Texas punk got me with a scissors in the back. I almost broke an arm pulling it out. Red and some other friends took care of the punk when they let him out of the dark. You said you know Red.”

This time he turned to look at me, and then past me as if some inspiration might come. We both listened to the waves for a beat. Capone’s eyes leaped suspiciously from Leonardo, fifteen yards away with his arms folded, to the asphalt road forty yards further where a Dade County police car was parked. A man in uniform was leaning against the door.

“You a cop?” Capone said, looking at the cop.

“No,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. I don’t get along with cops.”

“Right,” said Capone looking back at me. “Shoot. Tell your story.”

I loosened my tie, which was slowly strangling me as it picked up seawater, and squatted down to take some pressure off my aching back and be at eye level with Capone.

“Chico Marx is one of the Marx Brothers,” I said, not sure whether he would snarl at me for stating the obvious or take in the information as an important item.

“The Italian one,” said Capone softly, with a knowing movement of the head. “That don’t cut nothing special with me. I ain’t Italian. I was born right here in this country in Brooklyn.”

“Right,” I said. Something wasn’t right with Big Al. I remembered reading in the papers that about three years earlier, when Capone was getting ready to come out of jail, Jake Guzik had visited him in prison and told the press that Big Al was “nuttier than a fruitcake.” The papers had said Al wasn’t the first to go stir crazy on Alcatraz. I didn’t know that guys stayed stir crazy two years after they got out, but this Al Capone was clearly not the man who had ruled a city with a buck and a chopper. I decided to plunge into my tale, get it told fast, and get the hell out of there and into dry clothes.

“Couple of weeks ago,” I began talking fast, “Chico Marx was working in Vegas, leading a band. He got a call from Chicago. Guy identified himself as Gino. No last name. Acted as if Marx should know him. This Gino said Marx owed him 120 grand he lost on bets in Chicago and Cicero at Christmas. Marx thought it was a gag and hung up. He hadn’t been in Chicago at Christmas. He was busy enough losing his money in Las Vegas without side trips. Gino called back, said it was no joke and Marx better come up with the money. Couple of days later Marx got a box in the mail with somebody’s ear in it and a not very funny note telling him to hurry and pay or his brothers would get his piano fingers in a box.”

“Brothers?” said Capone.

“The Marx Brothers.”

“Yeah,” said Capone. “I had them out to the club in Cicero once.” Capone looked in the general direction of Cicero. “I had all the big ones-the Jew singers and comics. Cantor, Jessel, Sophie Tucker, the Ritz Brothers. I didn’t know what was supposed to be funny about the Ritz brothers, but I gave them real nice watches. Cantor made some joke about dancing in concrete shoes, but I gave him a watch too. I gave a lot of people things they don’t remember.”

I nodded my head and went on with my tale. “Well, Chico Marx has done a lot of gambling and a lot of losing, but he says this is a bum rap. Even if it wasn’t a bum rap he doesn’t have $120,000 right now. He doesn’t want to be mailed to his brothers whole or in pieces, but he’s not going to try to borrow money for something he doesn’t owe. I want to find this Gino and ask why he’s trying to get Marx. There must be some mistake. Can you help me?”

I’d left out a lot, like Louis B. Mayer’s desire to keep the Marx Brothers from bad publicity. Mayer didn’t like the Marx Brothers. He thought they were about as funny as Capone found Eddie Cantor and the Ritz Brothers. But Go West was out and doing well, and the Marxes owed Metro one more picture. Mayer wanted to start shooting with three brothers, not two. He didn’t think there’d be much box office potential in Marx Brothers movies if Chico met a knife or a bullet.

Capone’s head was nodding in understanding.

“I’m a good citizen,” he finally said, pulling his eyes away from the direction of the Mecca of Cicero. “You check with Colonel McCormick back in Chicago, at the Tribune. I stepped in and settled that newsboys strike when no one could handle it. Without me there wouldn’t have been any news for days, maybe weeks. I even helped the Feds with stuff.”

“And?” I prodded.

“I don’t know no Gino,” said Capone. “I mean, I know lots of Ginos but I’ve been away from it too long. I didn’t see any friends on the Rock. No letters. I lost touch. It went by.” His fat hand went up in the air to show things going by, and then rested on the deep scar on his left cheek. His middle finger traced the rut of the scar as he chewed on his cigar.

He coughed or sighed, removed the cigar, and spat in the water.

“Pace, pace, mio Dio,” said Capone softly.

“Cruda sventura m’astringe, ahime, a languir. Come il di primo de taut’ anni dura profondo il mio soffrir.” Capone looked up at me. “That’s Italian.”

“I figured,” I said.

“It’s Verdi, La Forza D’el Destino,” he explained. “It means ‘Peace, peace, gimme peace God. Because of bad luck I have to sit around doing nothing. My grief is great.’ Beautiful, huh?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Capone spat another piece of his cigar into the Atlantic.

“Go to Chicago,” he grunted. “Find my brother Ralph, or Nitti or Guzik or the Mayor. He owes me. I got him elected. Tell them I said you were O.K. They can call me and check. They’ll find this Gino.”

“Thanks,” I said, getting up and wondering what, if anything, I could do with the information.

“If you see Red,” Capone said dropping his voice, “tell him Snorky said hello. You got that?”

“Snorky said hello. I got it.”

“Good,” added Capone, pointing a fat finger at me. “Good. You know I learned to play banjo on the Rock? Red remembers. I wrote a song for my mother.”

His fat body under the robe tightened suddenly and shuddered. I think it was rage, but I couldn’t tell for sure because he turned his head away. He threw the fishing pole into the water and looked across the waves. The interview was clearly over.

I had something I might be able to use-the name of Al Capone-though I didn’t know what it was worth. I was also wet. My plan was find a hotel, change clothes, and decide what to do next.

I wobbled off the swaying pier and stood next to Leonardo. He looked like an inverted pyramid-his legs were thin and his upper body broad. He probably couldn’t run worth a damn, but if he caught whatever he was chasing, his arms and shoulders could melt it like a sugar cube in hot water. If he couldn’t catch what he was chasing, the gun bulging under his jacket could make up for a lot of distance. His dark face showed no teeth. He barely opened his mouth when he spoke. A neat round patch of hair on top of his head was white and unnatural, as if a finger of fire had scorched him. I wondered why, but had no intention of asking.

“You heard him?” I asked, glancing at the house to our left as we walked toward the waiting police car. The house was big, white, and made of wood. It was no mansion. We walked past a swimming pool with a life preserver bobbing in the middle.

“Al’s brother Ralph paid off this place when Al was in the can,” Leonardo volunteered. “Fifty grand. I don’t think Big Al has a dime of his own.”

I repeated my question: “You heard what we said out there?”

Leonardo grunted as we walked, then he spoke softly. We were far enough from the shore so the sound of the waves didn’t come between us.

“My job’s to hear. To be sure Al don’t say anything that might not be good for whoever hears it.”

We were a few dozen yards from the road. Leonardo whacked a palm tree with his open hand. I assumed it was his way of communing with nature and expressing his joy of life. I never communed with nature. It got me nowhere and gave me a backache. Leonardo kept walking. I sloshed.

“And if Al had said something embarrassing?”

“Some I warn. You wouldn’t take a warning.”

I’m five-nine and 165 pounds dripping wet, which I was at that moment. My face was benign when I was twelve, but it had gradually become semimalignant. My nose was almost flat from too many encounters with an older brother who was now a cop, and my business scars ran, and still run, from my big toe to my forehead. Leonardo thought I looked tough. I’m reconstituted scar tissue and bone, tentatively glued together by a kid doctor in L.A. named Parry. Leonardo could have given me the chance to take a warning. But he was right. I probably wouldn’t have taken it.

I looked straight ahead as we reached the road.

“You know the guy I was talking about, this Gino?” I said, drawing back my upper lip.

“Naw,” said Leonardo, eyeing the waiting cop. The cop eyed him back from behind dark blue sunglasses.

“I’ve been here about a year. Like Al, I’m a little out of touch.”

Leonardo shrugged and headed back toward the pier. I took a last look at “Snorky” Capone. He was sitting like a melting snowman with his body turned seaward. I crossed the road and got into the cop car.

The cop got in and adjusted his tan sheriff’s hat with the strap behind his head like Black Jack Pershing. He didn’t know that I knew he was almost bald. I had spotted him removing his hat while I walked with Leonardo. It gave me secret, useless information to compensate for the fact that there wasn’t a wrinkle or the sign of a wrinkle in his tight brown uniform. If he took off his mirror-shined brown shoes, his socks would be tailor made and odorless. The car was as neat as he was. I was sure he he hated firing his pistol because it made the barrel dirty. His smile was fixed, but whatever he was smiling about was his alone, and he didn’t plan to share it.

“Simmons,” I said, as he pulled away. I had cleverly deduced his name from the silver plate over his left shirt pocket. “Simmons, that man is stir crazy. You could have-”

“No he’s not,” said Simmons, gunning his Dodge past a truck full of watermelons and down a highway lined with heavy, tired green trees sagging under huge leaves. Louis Garner Simmons had the kind of downhome drawl I never could get used to.

“Capone’s got the tods, gator fever, Cuban itch, syph, venereal disease, whatever you want to call it. His brain is getting eaten up.”

Simmons had not taken me to see Capone by choice. The order had come from a captain who got his order from a local political boss who got a call from a Miami lawyer who did some work for MGM. That put Simmons far down the line, and made him angry. He was probably as clean in thought, word, and deed as he was in uniform, and the idea of being an escort for someone who wanted to talk to Capone pleased him not at all.

Simmons shot a glance at me without turning his head. What he saw didn’t please him-a wilted California lump making a puddle on his vacuumed seat. I was a contaminant he wanted to get rid of. He gunned the engine and we shot forward, hitting sixty-five.

“Capone got syphilis years ago,” he said. “It’s in his records. He knew it probably, but he was scared of the needle for the test. That’s a God’s fact. You beat that? Son of a bitch shot men down, got shot and cut himself, but he’s turning to jelly ’cause he was afraid of a needle. They finally tested him on the Rock after he blacked out one morning. But it was too late to do much. Some New York doctor comes down here every month giving him a new medicine, pencil-in, but that fat taxpayer’s a dying man.”

The idea of Capone dying tickled Simmons so much that he barely missed an old lady going fifteen miles an hour in an antique Ford. We were on a narrow strip of land with the Atlantic Ocean on our left and Biscayne Bay on our right.

“Why the rush?” I said, bracing myself with one hand on the windshield and one on the door handle.

“Got to get you to the train,” he said, reaching over to remove my hand from the window and wiping my hand print off with a cloth drawn from his pocket. Even the cloth was unwrinkled. “You can catch the City of Miami at 5:25 and be in Chicago by 9:55 tomorrow night.”

My bag was in the back of his car. I hadn’t even had time to check into a hotel after I got off the morning plane from Atlanta.

“I thought I might stick around here for a few days,” I said.

He pursed his lips, shook his head no and said, “You wouldn’t like it.”

Before I could think of a comment, he turned on his car radio with the volume high. Instead of police calls, we got Artie Shaw playing “Frenesi.” The rest of the ride was uneventful, if we don’t count the kid on the bike we almost killed on Biscayne Boulevard and the two pregnant women who dodged out of our way as we screeched around a corner onto Second Street. Artie Shaw’s clarinet seemed to match the action. I saw what looked like a train station coming, so I braced myself without touching the window.

Simmons reached back for my suitcase, lifted it effortlessly into the front seat, dropped it in my lap and reached past me to open the door when we stopped.

“Does this mean you don’t want to be pen pals?” I said.

“Have a nice trip,” he replied through a white-toothed grin. “Got a feeling people are going to be expecting you in Chicago.” He pronounced it She-cawh-goo, with as much contempt and Vitamin C as he could squeeze into an orange juice drawl. I got out. He got out and followed, but not closely enough so I could reopen conversation. Inside the station, he leaned against a wall after checking it carefully for cleanliness. I bought my ticket.

The ticket man told me to hurry and I did, leaving foot-print puddles across the tile floor. The City of Miami had its steam up, and I cleared the iron step as the train jerked forward. Simmons was on the platform with his arms folded, making sure I didn’t get off. I had spent less than six hours in the sun and fun capital of the world.

Instead of heading for a seat and making it too wet to sit in for the next twenty-four hours, I balanced my way to a rocking washroom. I hailed a porter, got a hanger, and changed into my only other pair of pants. The pants had a crease in the knees where they had been folded into the case over a wire hanger. The crease wouldn’t come out.

I hung up my suit and opened the window to dry it as fast as possible. It might be a little stiff, but it would be wearable.

Outside the window I caught a glimpse of a station that said we were going through Hollywood. For a second I thought time had slipped me a Mickey, or I had taken one too many in the head. I decided instead that there were two Hollywoods. Florida’s was a little burg we shot through in less than six seconds.

A guy with a pot belly, tweed suit, vest, and a grey-brown beard came into the washroom humming. He looked at me and decided not to hum and not to stay. I looked in the mirror to see what had scared him and I saw. My hair tumbled over my bloodshot eyes and my teeth were clenched.

I brushed my hair back with my hand, soaked my eyes in cold water, and persuaded my teeth to relax. The water began to slosh around the toilet as we picked up speed. By the time we flew through Fort Lauderdale ten minutes later, I had had enough. I left my suit hanging and headed for the dining car. A little red flower bounced in a glass holder on the table where I was led by a waiter. Two fat women with that Southern accent I so loved sat across from me, talking about Corine’s children. I tried not to listen, but I discovered anyway that Corine’s children were disrespectful and should have been given the stick by Andy. The rest of the diners heard it too. The fat woman who suggested the stick looked up at me. I nodded in agreement of corporal punishment for children as I took a big bite of tuna on white and looked out the window at a lake. An alligator slithered out of the water. I had never seen an alligator before. I had never found a piece of wood in a tuna sandwich before either, but I did now and spat it out while the fat women watched me in disgust. By West Palm Beach the two ladies were gouging chasms in their peach melba, and I was nibbling soggy potato chips and drinking beer while I looked for more gators in the sunset. I didn’t see any. I should have been thinking about where I was going and what I was going to do when I got there.

By Fort Pierce my suit was dry and slightly stiff. I carried it on a hanger to my seat as the sun went down and the Florida East Coast Railway carried me through New Smyrna Beach. When Louis Garner Simmons ran me out of Miami, I had acted cheap and bought a coach seat without even asking about compartments, even though the freight was being paid by Louis B. Mayer. Habits are hard to break. My seat was next to one of the fat ladies from the dining car. She looked up at me over bifocals as we went through Daytona Beach, and then she turned back to the book on what remained of her lap.

I glanced over her shoulder at the book-no mean task considering the size of her shoulder.

“How’d you like an elbow in your neck?” she said, giving her subtle opinion of literary eavesdropping. Her voice rang clear enough to be heard back in Miami in spite of the noise of the train. Her eyes didn’t leave the page. Then she turned her gaze on me. We had clearly begun a beautiful friendship-the start of a trainboard romance.

“No thanks,” I said.

The book she was reading was The Grapes of Wrath. I hadn’t read it, but I had seen the movie. I decided to cement our relationship.

“Tom Joad joins the Commies at the end,” I whispered.

The fat lady threw her elbow back, hitting my shoulder and letting out a massive grunt. The conductor, who looked old enough and mean enough to have been John Wilkes Booth’s accomplice, came running down the aisle. His lip was turned up on one side in a pained sneer, and his ticket punch was held high like a weapon.

“What’s the trouble he-ah?” he said, making it clear that he and the woman were of the same tribe. I was outnumbered. If I struggled, four hooded Klansmen might thunder out of the baggage room and trample me.

Before anyone could answer, the lady hit me in the neck with a second book. A car full of people rose to stare and an infant began to howl. I could swear that it howled with a Cracker accent.

“Now listen, mister,” sighed the conductor, “we don’t want no trouble from your kind and no smart talk.”

The lady tried to punch me with her chubby arms but I backed away.

“He’s bothering me,” she said. “Insulting me.”

“That true?” said the conductor.

“No,” I said, “but-”

“Come with me,” he said, and hurried down the aisle. I grabbed my suitcase and picked up the book the woman had thrown at me. It was an Agatha Christie novel, The Peril at End House. I had read that one.

I picked up my suit and leaned toward the woman over the conductor’s outstretched boney arm and his hand holding a ticket puncher.

“Sorry ma’m,” I whispered with a smile, knowing my smile resembled a twisted grimace, “but the girl did it in this one. She set up the whole thing to make it look like she was the victim.”

The book came back at me as I tripped up the aisle escorted by the conductor and dozens of eyes. I could hear the pages flutter open as Hercule Poirot hit a wall and came down on some soprano who sang, “Hey?”

Nobody tripped me as I tried to keep up with the old conductor. I had a lot to be proud of. A Southern cop had run me out of Miami, so I had gained my revenge against the South by doing battle with a rotund belle of the rails. Maybe if the South had enough fat women, and I had enough time to provoke them, I could eventually gain my confidence back and destroy the Union.

Two cars down the old conductor stopped and pulled his blue cap firmly over his eyes to show he meant business. His face was filled with lines of grandfatherly wrath.

“Don’t know what you did or said, son, but she deserved it and more. Been shushing up the kids and making loud remarks ’bout people. Come on. I’ll buy you a beer and you can take the rest of the trip in those two empty seats over there where you can spread out some.”

His accent had come out soft and warm in spite of an aged rasp, and I decided that it could be a pleasant sound.

He was as good as his skinny word, and with a second beer in me I was almost asleep when we hit Jacksonville. Most of the lights were out in the car. It was about midnight. Out the window on the platform a couple of people were getting on. One was a skinny kid in an orange shirt who looked up at the windows. I thought his eyes rested on me. They were the glazed eyes of a drunk, a junk, a punk, or all three. I looked at him because he had no baggage and then I forgot him. The ten minute layover and the vibration of the train put me to sleep.

I dreamt I was working for Al Capone. There was a party, and my job was to watch the guests’ valuables and coats. They began piling coats and jewels on a bed in a small room. More and more guests came. My ex-wife Anne came with George Raft and acted as if she didn’t know me. So far it was pretty true to life. Then Koko the Clown also came to the party. Koko was a frequent star of my dream world. I was also sure we were in Cincinnati. I dream about Cincinnati a lot, though I’ve never been there. I’ve got an elaborate map of Cincinnati in my head from dreams.

I remember thinking that my dream was getting stupid, but the dream didn’t stop. Coats, fur, and cloth piled up. I was running out of room, and the mound of clothes was about to topple over and smother me. I panicked and reached for my gun to shoot at the pile, but Al Capone’s voice found me. “Is this the way you work for your friend Snorky?” he grunted. I reached out my hand and asked him to pull me out before I drowned in other people’s wealth. Instead he sent in the Marx Brothers, a plumber, a manicurist, and a couple of trays of food. I complained about my bad back, tried to think of good deeds. “Cuts no ice with me,” said Capone. “I’m a dying man. But you can have my scars.”

I told him I didn’t want his scars, that I had plenty of my own. He laughed, and I woke up with a stiff neck as the train pulled into Birmingham, Alabama, at 8:08 A.M. My mouth was dry. My face felt like a well-used toothbrush, and seated next to me at the window was the thin young man with the orange shirt who had gotten on in Jacksonville without a suitcase. He had his chin in his hand and his face away from me so I couldn’t see his eyes. All I could see was his washed out, thin yellow hair and a bristly neck. I said, “Good morning.” He said nothing. I tilted my seat back, closed my eyes and tried to think. I got nowhere, so I went to the washroom, shaved, brushed my teeth, and went to the dining car where I had two bowls of cereal-one Quaker Rice and the other Wheaties. When I got back to my seat, the young man hadn’t moved. Someone had either covered him with quick-drying lacquer, he was an Indian Yoga, or he was dead. I didn’t care which. By early evening my always unreliable back was bothering me from sitting too long, and I had worked out a brilliant plan-I would do what Capone had suggested. I would try to find Ralph Capone, Nitti, or Guzik. I’d use Al’s name and hope they’d help.

Satisfied with my mental effort, and feeling friendly, I asked the young guy if he was going to dinner. He hadn’t moved for lunch. He grunted something and didn’t move. I went to the dining car and was enjoying a Salisbury steak and carrots until we pulled to a stop in Indianapolis and I looked out the window. The young blond guy in the orange shirt was standing on the platform, which was fine with me. What wasn’t so fine was that he was holding my suitcase. I reached for my wallet to throw down a couple of dollars on the table but the wallet was gone. The waiter shouted “wait” but I didn’t wait. The young guy hadn’t seen me. He might still think I was sitting unsuspecting over a steak I couldn’t pay for. I jumped off the train with the steam of the engine drifting back to give me some cover.

I could tell it was cold, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking for someone. I spotted him walking fast down the platform. As I moved between people toward him I passed the dining car. The waiter was pounding on the window at me making enough noise so everyone on the platform looked, including the guy with my suitcase. He spotted me and broke into a run. He had at least twenty years and fifteen yards on me but he wasn’t in good shape and he was carrying a suitcase with a few heavy items including a.38 automatic. Bad back or no bad back, I caught up with him in thirty yards when he ran into a woman carrying a two year old.

The woman fell but held onto the kid, and I jumped, hitting the young guy at the waist. I was on his back, hammering his face against the concrete. The woman with the kid sat screaming at us, but I only hit the thief’s head once, and in spite of the blood I knew he had nothing worse than a broken nose. I turned him over, pulled my wallet from his jacket, and freed my suitcase from his hands.

I had some questions for him, and as I sat on his chest I knew he would answer. I wanted to know if I was a coincidence or someone had fingered me. And if so, who and why. But two things changed my mind. The City of Miami began to pull out, and about ten cars down on the platform a guy with a cop was hurrying toward us. I got up fast, carrying my bag and stuffing my wallet in my pocket. I stepped over the lady sitting on the ground. Her kid smiled at me and I smiled back. The smile got him. He cried. I made the train with a jump that wrenched my back.

I leaned painfully out to watch the cop stop at the battered punk and help him up. I didn’t think the thief would say much. He probably had a record, and he’d certainly have a lot of explaining if he tried to nail me. I fumbled for a pill in my suitcase and limped back to the dining car. There wasn’t any water on the table. I took the flower out of the glass and used the water to wash down the pain pill. It tasted green.

“Trying to steal my suitcase,” I explained to the waiter, pulling out a five and pushing it toward him. He pocketed the bill, asked if I was all right, and turned away.

I spent the rest of the trip in my seat minding my own business. We hit Chicago just at 10 P.M. The windows were frosted, and I could make out mounds of snow through the circle I rubbed clear with my sleeve. I put my suit jacket on even though it didn’t match my pants. If no one invited me to a presidential inauguration, I would be all right. I thanked the old conductor and followed a Negro in a heavy coat down the metal steps and into a blast of cold Chicago air. It was night, but the train depot was bright with lights showing swept-up piles of dirty snow. It was the first time I had seen snow this close. I’d seen it on mountains, but never close enough to touch. I didn’t stop to touch it. The cold cut me in half and kicked me in the back for good luck. Then it scratched at my teeth like a nail on glass. I pushed past people who were bundled to their eyes, prepared for the winter blast. Sprinting around a group of lunatic girls who were singing, I almost made it to a door that glowed warm, promising coffee. A hand grabbed my sleeve.

“Peters,” said a deep voice, confident as doom.

The guy holding me was craggy faced and about fifty. His nose was red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold, alcohol, or both. He wore a coat and hat, but no scarf, and the coat wasn’t buttoned tight. He seemed to ignore the cold. His grip was tight and mean, but on his face was a soft, tolerant smile, like he had seen everything and I was no surprise. Another hand grabbed my free arm, and I turned to see who was attached to it. It was a burly young cop in a dark blue coat and cap. He wasn’t smiling. He looked unhappy, cold, and a little angry. I figured that the punk had tried to nail me in Indianapolis, and the call had come ahead.

“Yeah, I’m Peters,” I said, “and I’m cold. Can we go inside?”

The fat lady with The Grapes of Wrath passed by us into the door. She saw the cop holding me and let out a triumphant trumpet, like a charging elephant I had once seen in a Tarzan movie. The elephant spewed out clouds of mist in the crisp cold air and disappeared forever.

The red nosed guy let go of my arm and nodded as if my request were reasonable. We pushed through the door and started up a concrete stairway.

“Welcome to Chicago,” he said.