Garden of Beasts

eventually pick the wrong punks and end up with a broken bone. He’d known the same thing about his present career: that ultimately a Dewey or an O’Banion would bring him down.
    Thinking of one of his father’s favorite expressions: “On the best day, on the worst day, the sun finally sets.” The round man would snap his colorful suspenders and add, “Cheer up. Tomorrow’s a whole new horse race.”
    He jumped when the phone rang.
    Paul looked at the black Bakelite for a long moment. On the seventh ring, or the eighth, he answered. “Yeah?”
    “Paul,” a crisp, young voice said. No neighborhood slur.
    “You know who it is.”
    “I’m up the hall in another apartment. There’re six of us here. Another half dozen on the street.”
    Twelve? Paul felt an odd calm. Nothing he could do about twelve. They’d get him one way or the other. He sipped more of the Royal Crown. He was so damn thirsty. The fan wasn’t doing anything but moving the heat from one side of the room to the other. He asked, “You working for the boys from Brooklyn or the West Side? Just curious.”
    “Listen to me, Paul. Here’s what you’re going to do.You only have two guns on you, right? The Colt. And that little twenty-two. The others are back in your apartment?”
    Paul laughed. “That’s right.”
    “You’re going to unload them and lock the slide of the Colt open. Then walk to the window that’s not sealed and pitch them out. Then you’re going to take your jacket off, drop it on the floor, open the door and stand in the middle of the room with your hands up in the air. Stretch ’em way up high.”
    “You’ll shoot me,” he said.
    “You’re living on borrowed time anyway, Paul. But if you do what I say you might stay alive a little longer.”
    The caller hung up.
    He dropped the hand piece into the cradle. He sat motionless for a moment, recalling a very pleasant night a few weeks ago. Marion and he had gone to Coney Island for miniature golf and hot dogs and beer, to beat the heat. Laughing, she’d dragged him to a fortune teller at the amusement park. The fake gypsy had read his cards and told him a lot of things. The woman had missed this particular event, though, which you’d think should’ve showed up somewhere in the reading if she was worth her salt.
    Marion . . . He’d never told her what he did for a living. Only that he owned a gym and he did business occasionally with some guys who had questionable pasts. But he’d never told her more. He realized suddenly that he’d been looking forward to some kind of future with her. She was a dime-a-dance girl at a club on the West Side, studying fashion design during the day. She’d be working now; she usually went till 1 or 2 A.M . How would she find out what happened to him?
    If it was Dewey he’d probably be able to call her.
    If it was the boys from Williamsburg, no call. Nothing.
    The phone began ringing again.
    Paul ignored it. He slipped the clip from his big gun and unchambered the round that was in the receiver, then he emptied the cartridges out of the revolver. He walked to the window and tossed the pistols out one at a time. He didn’t hear them land.
    Finishing the soda pop, he took his jacket off, dropped it on the floor. He started for the door but paused. He went back to the Kelvinator and got another Royal Crown. He drank it down. Then he wiped his face again, opened the front door, stepped back and lifted his arms.
    The phone stopped ringing.
    •   •   •
    “This’s called The Room,” said the gray-haired man in a pressed white uniform, taking a seat on a small couch.
    “You were never here,” he added with a cheerful confidence that meant there was no debate. He added, “And you never heard about it.”
    It was 11 P.M. They’d brought Paul here directly from Malone’s. It was a private town house on the Upper East Side, though most of the rooms on the ground floor contained desks and telephones and Teletype machines, like in an office. Only in the parlor were there divans and armchairs. On the walls here were pictures of new and old navy ships. A globe sat in the corner. FDR looked down at him from a spot above a marble mantel. The room was wonderfully cold. A private house that had air-conditioning. Imagine.
    Still handcuffed, Paul had been deposited in a comfortable leather armchair. The two younger men who’d escorted him out of Malone’s apartment, also in white uniforms, sat beside him and slightly behind.