Gangway! (6 page)

    Vangie hurried across the street. "Go on. On the run, before I call the police."

    "Yeah," the gamy guy said, "that'll be the day." His lip curled. "This dude belong to you, Miss Kemp?"

    "Yes. And I'll thank you to keep…"

    "All right… all right. We'll do you a little favor this time." The gamy guy stuffed the empty sack back under his coat and made as if to tip his hat but only tugged at the brim a little. He said to Gabe, "All right, friend, we'll take our leave. But a word of advice-you hang around this female, you better count your fingers every time she touches your hand." And the two of them turned and sloped off.

    Gabe felt a lot better without those birds crowding him the way they had. He said, "What was that all about anyhow?"

    "Roscoe and his partner? They're crimps."

    "Crimps? What's that?"

    "They shanghai people. To get crews for the ships."

    Gabe paled. "To go on the ocean?"

    "An awful lot of sailors jump ship when they get to San Francisco," she said. "They all want to head for the gold fields. So the ships need crews, and that means there's good money to be made in crimping."

    "Oh, I couldn't take the ocean," Gabe said.

    "Good thing I came back when I did." She seemed calmer than necessary, under the circumstances. Handing him the wallet she'd been brandishing, she said, "Here. Now come buy me dinner."

    

    

    Ittzy Herz was happy. He was out on his own and that was a rare treat. His Mama kept saying all the time, "Ittzy, you got to stay home where it's safe, people always want to take advantage of you. You got to stay home in your room where it's safe." Never had a man had such a protective Mama, and never had a man needed one less.

    He didn't mind sitting in the back room while the rubes paid a quarter to look in at him through the peephole. It made him feel important. And it gave him time to read, play solitaire, and think about where he'd go and what he'd do when he was finally free for good. What he minded most was Mama fussing over him all the time. And maybe even worse than that was the times when store business was brisk and peephole business was slack-like it had been tonight. Mama would make him put on an apron and get behind the counter just like everybody else in the family.

    Ittzy didn't like that at all. After all he was in show business.

    So today when her back was turned he'd scooted out of his apron and out of the store. And here he was: free. It was the first time he'd run away in quite a while, and it was just as much fun as always. All the people gawking at him, trying to touch him, fawning over him as if he were royalty.

    He didn't quite know what all the fuss was about. Everybody seemed to think Ittzy led a charmed life. Well, his father before he'd died had been fond of reading from the Book, and it said right in the Book that a man had threescore years and ten. So Ittzy knew he still had plenty of years to live. The Book said so. What was everybody so surprised about? Ittzy was only thirty-four years old-he still had thirty-six to go.

    He stopped into the Golden Rule Saloon for a beer and people crowded one another aside at the bar to get near him. Ittzy saw people he knew and he waved to them the way he'd seen opera stars wave from their open coaches to the applauding crowds they passed.

    Over at a table with a skinny Easterner and a whole lot of food was a nice girl named Evangeline Kemp whom Ittzy knew slightly. He waved to her and she waved back with a pretty smile, and Ittzy felt good. He thought he might write a poem about a pretty girl's smile. It sounded like a good original idea, and he began to work out the wording in his head. He'd written thousands of poems. Someday someone would recognize his genius and publish one of them.

    A big fellow with an enormous moustache came rolling into the saloon and slugged his way to the bar near Ittzy, although Ittzy had the feeling the man hadn't seen or recognized him. The man slammed a hammerlike fist down on the bar and roared, "Anybody around here sell anything that'd approximate a drink?"

    Ittzy sipped his beer and basked in all the admiring attention he was getting. But he glanced from time to time at the guy with the huge moustache, who was just about the only person in the room who didn't seem to have noticed Ittzy's presence. It bothered Ittzy to have somebody who didn't know who he was. Especially since he was sure he'd seen that face before.

    The big fellow's drink was delivered by a sweating barkeep and the guy took a healthy swallow, almost gagging on it. He said hoarsely, "Christ, they seem to be puttin' bigger snakes in these here bottles this season." His eyes were watering and he shoved his face into the crook of his elbow to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. When he dropped his arm his eyes lit on Ittzy for the first time. He froze.

    Ittzy began to smile, enjoying his little triumph, even if it was belated. At least the guy recognized him now.

    The guy with the moustache stared at him without blinking-without even seeming to breathe. Then his face slowly changed. It got dark, suffused with blood. The big jaw under the mustache crept forward to lie in a grim belligerent line. The guy's hand dropped off the bar and he suddenly bent over, lifting one foot.

    Ittzy couldn't figure out what the man was doing. But then he saw he was working the boot off his foot.

    Finally the boot came off and the big fellow turned and hobbled toward Ittzy on one booted foot and one dirty socked foot.

    Ittzy frowned.

    The guy with the moustache came right up to him, elbowing everybody else out of his way, and shouted right in Ittzy's face, "You're the fellow sold me this boot!"

    Ittzy just looked at him. He couldn't figure out what the fellow was getting at.

    The big man waved the boot in Ittzy's face, and the sole flapped open and shut as though it were the boot talking instead of the man. "This is what you sold me!" the big fellow said (or the boot said). "What you aim to do about it?"

    "Me?" Ittzy didn't think of it as his problem; it wasn't his boot, and it wasn't his store. "Nothing," he said, turning back to his beer.

    The big fellow grabbed his elbow. "I say you sold me this boot!" he yelled.

    "Did I?"

    "You're damn right you did! Two hours ago!"

    Ittzy smiled in friendly fashion. "Maybe you better talk to my Mama," he said. "It's her store."

    "I'm talking to you!" the big fellow yelled, flapping the boot some more like a ventriloquist. "You're the one sold me this boot!"

    "I'm just trying to drink my beer here," Ittzy said, still working at being friendly.

    "You got to make good on this!"

    "My Mama doesn't put any guarantee on her goods."

    "Two hours!"

    Ittzy shook his head and went back to his beer. All he wanted was a little peace and quiet in which to enjoy this rare moment of freedom before his Mama came looking for him, as inevitably she would.

    But the big fellow yanked him around yet again by the elbow and this time instead of the boot he had a gun in his hand. He wave the big old mean-looking .45-caliber revolver in Ittzy's face. "Well, gee whiz," Ittzy said, in mild complaint.

    The big fellow was breathing pretty hard, but he did try to keep his voice at a reasonable level. "I want to know what you're going to do about that boot," he said.

    "Well," Ittzy said helplessly, "just nothing, I guess."

    "You're asking for it."

    "I'd admire to finish this beer."

    The big fellow's big thumb curled over the hammer of the .45 and drew it back to full cock. "You're gonna get it!" he yelled, no longer trying to control his voice.

    Ittzy shrugged, and turned away to address himself once more to his beer. Everybody in the saloon was bolt still and silent. He wished the big fellow would go somewhere else. There was nothing Ittzy could do to help him out, which he'd already explained, so why didn't he just take his boot and his gun and hop off to pester somebody else for a while?

    But he didn't. Instead, he yelled at the top of his voice, "All right!" and yanked Ittzy around by his elbow for about the twentieth time. Then he fired that big .45 revolver point blank at Ittzy from two feet away.

    It was a terrible noise, up so close like that. Ittzy blinked, and the gent at the bar next to him said, "Uhh," and folded slowly forward, fading down onto the floor.

    Everybody looked at the gent on the floor. The fellow with the gun in his hand cocked his head to one side, as though listening to something he didn't understand, and said, "George? Not you, George, him. George?"

    There was a lot of ruckus in the bar. Ittzy frowned and picked up his beer to finish it, since he doubted he'd have much more time to sit here in quiet and contentment. That poor sport with the talking boot sure could louse up a man's afternoon off.

    The bar had gotten completely silent just before the shooting, but just after it everybody had started talking at once. Now all of a sudden everything was quiet again. Ittzy turned around to see what had happened, and another actor had entered the scene. It was a very tall skinny cop with bright red hair sticking out from under his bobby helmet; he had bustled into the Golden Rule and stopped just inside to appraise the situation.

    Ittzy was at the bar and the big fellow with the moustache was down on one knee saying, "George? George?" The smoking gun in his right fist was forgotten. Everybody else had crowded back away, leaving a little open space around them.

    The cop pushed his way through to the open circle. He was talking, wanting to know what was going on, who fired that shot, what happened.

    A dozen people started explaining things, all at the same time. And from the edges of the circle, other customers began to drift Ittzy-ward. In a city full of transients possessed by gold fever, a guaranteed good-luck charm could draw a bigger crowd than a shooting.

    They started to touch him. A hand would reach out of the crowd and pluck at his sleeve. Somebody's finger touched his cheek. Someone whispered, "You be my good luck charm too, huh Ittzy? Huh?"

    Ittzy concentrated, as best he could, on his beer.

    Somebody said, "Well at least George ain't dead. I guess he'll pull through. Get him right over to the nearest doctor, will you?" It sounded like the cop talking, but the crowd had jammed in around Ittzy and he couldn't see. Then the cop was saying, presumably to the big fellow, "You, there, you're under arrest for assault and disturbing the peace and attempted murder."

    "ITTZY!"

    Oh, no. He closed his eyes in misery. It was Mama's voice, you couldn't mistake that claxon.

    The two of them approached him at the same time from different directions, the tall red-haired cop and Mama. They reached him simultaneously, and the cop opened his mouth to speak. But Mama quick grabbed Itzzy's ear and pulled him off his stool. "Now," she yelled, "you come right home with me!"

    The cop said, "Hey. Wait a minute. I want to question this here witness."

    Mama turned and leveled her ferocious stare on the cop. "You want to see my boy Ittzy up close, Officer McCorkle, you come around my shop and pay twenty-five cents, the fourth part of a dollar, just like everbody else."

    "Oh, Mama," Ittzy said.

    Mama took a firmer grip on his ear and headed for the door.

    

    

    Gabe watched Ittzy's mother lead Ittzy toward the door. "Maybe I ought to go touch him too."

    Vangie said, "Why?"

    "If a fellow wants to be in New York and finds himself stuck in San Francisco, what kind of luck would you call that?"

    "Better than the fellow deserved," she said. "You finished eating?"

    Gabe looked at all his empty plates. Four of them. "I believe I am."

    The red-haired cop, McCorkle, was dragging the kicking and howling moustachioed guy out. Ittzy and his mother were gone. The crowd was separating into smaller excited knots of people, everybody talking at once. Vangie said, "I hope there's enough in that wallet to pay the bill for all this."

    It was something he hadn't thought to investigate. He fumbled the wallet open anxiously.

    It was all right. There were two five-dollar greenjackets in the wallet. He paid the supper tab and still had five dollars and fifty-five cents, of which minus-$4.45 belonged to him.

    This wouldn't do. He was going to have to get himself in motion; he couldn't spend the rest of his life living off this girl's ingenuity. "Let's get out of here."

    "Where to?"

    He was trying to think but it was no good. The heaps of food with which he'd filled himself had replenished most of what he'd lost on the river, but it didn't make him any more alert and wide-eyed. Seasickness took a lot out of you.

    "I need sleep before I can start making plans. Let's check out those hotel rooms of yours."

    "Right," Vangie said. Leaving the table, they threaded a path through the crowd and emerged onto the street.

    It was dark. A cold breeze swept past them, stirring tendrils of fog. Gaslights were encircled by vague misty halos and the people who went by were sinister moving shadows. Gabe shivered. "Which way?"

    "We'll try up here first."

    The climb made New York's Washington Heights seem like a molehill by comparison. What idiot had decided to put a would-be city on the side of a cliff? Out here in the West they just didn't know how to do anything right.

    "Where are you from anyway?"

    "You mean where was I born?" Vangie asked. "On Mission Street in a second-story flat across the street from the church."