On the Waterfront (36 page)

“Okay, okay …” Charley was fighting himself for a decision. He glanced out to see how close they were to the isolated two-story frame house casually identified by the Danny D. crowd as “the gashouse.” “I’m gonna tell ’em I—I’ll tell ’em I couldn’t find you. Ten to one he won’t believe me, but …” He quickly reached into his pocket and slipped Terry the gun. “Here, you may need it.” Then he leaned forward and slid open the glass partition between them and the front seat. “Hey, driver, pull over.” He opened the door while the car was still moving. “Jump out, quick, and keep going.” He slapped Terry hard on the back. Half a block down was a suburban bus.

Terry shouted to hail it and ran toward it down the dark, glistening road.

Charley leaned back against the seat, exhausted. “Now turn around, driver,” he said wearily, his eyes closed. “Take me to the Garden.”

The driver made a violent left turn that half threw Charley to the floor, high-balled his car up into Danny D.’s driveway, and sped right on into the garage, where a couple of specialists had been stationed to handle what came in. Charley Malloy opened his mouth to protest, but the men knew their work and he never said another word.

W
HEN THE BUS DROPPED
Terry off on a side street near the center of Bohegan he jumped out and kept on running for half a dozen blocks through the hard, slanting rain until he came to the Doyle tenement. He had lost his cap on the way and his hair was wet and tangled. The icy rain dripped down his forehead and along his unshaven cheeks. He raced up the stale, creaky stairs two and three at a time, carried along by an obsession that had seized him and driven away all sense of safety and precaution. It was the image of Katie Doyle’s turning her back on him after his confession that tormented him—her cutting angry words, her running away. His mind was a motor propelling him forward. He reached the fourth-story landing, ran to the door and shouted: “Katie! Katie!”

Katie was in bed, trying to fall asleep. Pop was out with Moose and Jimmy and the door was latched. “Keep the door locked,” Pop had told her, “and don’t let nobody in. I don’t care if it’s God Almighty Himself.”

“Katie! Hey, Katie!” Terry shouted through the kitchen door. Katie didn’t answer and Terry called her name again while pounding on the door.

Katie ran to the door to make sure it was latched. “You can’t come in. Get away from here!” she shouted angrily.

“Katie, please open the door. I gotta talk to you.”

He kicked at the door and she screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! Stay away from me.”

She made sure the latch was fastened and hurried back into her narrow bedroom and tried to push her metal bed over against the door. She was terrified by the sound of Terry’s body crashing against the flimsy wood of the kitchen door. Then she heard the sound of the latch giving and Terry was rushing in on her. She tried to pull the bedclothes over her. His hair was wild and his arms were flailing. His eyes frightened her.

“Get out of here—out of here!” she shrieked, and when he tried to come close to her, whimpering, “Katie, lissen …” she shook her head and said, “If Pop finds you in here, he’ll kill you. You’ve got to stay away from me.”

As he came closer she leaped from the bed and hurled herself against him, trying to push him back out of the room. He held her off, gripping her arms hard and shouting into her face, “You think I stink, don’t you? You think I stink for what I done.”

She wrenched herself free and said furiously, “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want you to …”

“I know what you want me to do,” he cut in.

“I don’t want you to do anything except get out of here and—let your conscience tell you what to do.”

“Shut up about that conscience.” He beat his right fist viciously against the metal bedpost Katie had tried to use as a barrier. “Why d’ya hafta keep usin’ that goddamn word?”

She backed away, still fearful of him, but fearful for him too.

“Why, Terry, I never mentioned that word to you before. Never.”

He stopped, surprised and dazed.

“No?”

She shook her head. She was no longer afraid of him. No longer did he seem a vicious hunter animal running wild in the street. Rain-soaked and wind-swept, he seemed more like some smaller, hunted animal, bewildered by his uncertainties as to where to turn.

“You’re beginning to listen to yourself,” she said. “That’s where that word is coming from.”

“Katie,” he said quietly, “don’t get sore now. But I—I guess it’s somethin’—somethin’ what ya feel when, well, when you’re in love with somebody.”

Again he wanted to put his arms around her and hold her close and kiss her and bury his face in the sweet warmth of her neck. But he stood there, staring wildly at her. And strangely for Kate, Terry Malloy was like the dark, evil dream of carnal sin that would come to her in her bed at Marygrove—never the nice boys she met at the outrageously over-supervised school dances, but the fierce, rowdy specter of naked male passion that would steal into her room and press down upon her until some nights she would actually turn on the light and get up out of bed and plead with Mary to protect her from this stain. There was an overwhelming impulse in her now against every habit and belief to throw herself, barely dressed, shamelessly into his arms.

“Terry, please—not now—let’s talk about it—some other time,” she said. “Now you have to go—please.”

“Okay, okay, forget I said it,” Terry mumbled. “I got no right …” He started to turn way. “I’m sorry about that door. So much has been happenin’. I guess I can’t take it so good.”

“I’ll put you in my prayers tonight,” Katie said seriously.

“Boy, c’n I use ’em!” Terry said.

From the courtyard behind the tenement came a muffled cry, “Hey, Terry. Hey, Terry …”

Startled, Terry hurried into the kitchen and peered down the fire-escape. He couldn’t see anybody in the darkness, but he heard the voice, louder this time.

“Hey, Terry, your brother’s down here. He wants to see you.”

“Charley…” Terry said.

“Hey, Terry,” came the cry from four stories below, “come down and see your brother.”

“Terry, don’t go down,” Katie begged.

“He may be in trouble.”

“Lock yourself in your room,” Katie said.

“Charley?” Terry called out the window into the courtyard.

“Come on down—he’s watin’ fer ya,” the strange voice answered from below.

“I gotta go down,” Terry said, climbing out to the fire-escape.

“Terry, be careful,” Katie called.

“I got
this
,” Terry said, patting the invisible gun.

“Terry, please be careful,” Katie cried out after him as he started down the fire-escape through the sleeting rain.

“We’re over here, Terry, over here,” the muffled voice rose through the darkness.

Katie could hear Terry’s metallic steps hurrying down the fire-escape. Across the narrow courtyard, strung with clothes-lines, a window opened two stories below. A woman put her head out and looked up toward Katie. It was Mrs. Collins. Katie didn’t recognize her for a moment with her hair tight around her head in a hairnet.

“You hear that?” the woman called.

Katie nodded, holding her arms around her shoulders against the bitter cold.

“It’s the same way they called my Andy out the night I lost him,” Mrs. Collins said.

Katie ran to the closet and pulled out her cloth coat. Then, heedless of Mrs. Collins’ cries, she started down the fire-escape, crying down into the winter night. “Terry! Terry!” When she reached the bottom landing, a shabby, indistinct figure shuffled toward her out of a coal shed. To her amazement he was singing at the top of his hoarse, cracking voice an old popular song meant to carry a gay beat but which was now rendered like a dirge.

“Tippi … tippi … tin … tippi … tin …”

Katie recognized the neighborhood derelict Mutt Murphy. He had an almost empty bottle of wine in his hand and he was singing toward the lighted windows.

“Tippi … tippi …”

A ground-floor window opened and an angry voice shouted out, “Shetup!”

“Tan …”

Another window opened on the rubbish-strewn court and a furious voice shouted, “Drop dead!” An old shoe, aimed at the staggering figure of Mutt, backed up this suggestion.

Mutt shook his fist at the offending windows. “Spit on me, curse me ’n stone me,” he shouted hoarsely, “but I suffer fer yersins …”

The man who had thrown the old shoe shouted back loudly, “Go suffer somewhere else, ya bum.”

The windows banged shut. Under the fire-escape Katie had been looking around for some sign of Terry or his caller, but the raw night seemed to have swallowed them.

“Terreee …” her small panicked voice echoed down the squat row of tenements. Mutt staggered toward her, brandishing the bottle of wine. His slobbering lips horrified her.

“I seen him. I seen him …”

“Which way did he go?”

“I seen it happen. With me own eyes I seen it.”

“What? What did you see?”

“I seen ’em put ’im to death! I heard ’im cry out!”

“Who—who did you see? Tell me—tell me!” Katie grew hysterical.

“His executioners. They was stabbin’ ’im in his side. An’ his soft eyes was lookin’ down at ’em.”

His reddened St. Bernard’s eyes began to leak great tears down his bleary, unshaven face. “Oh, I weep fer ’im—I weep fer ’im.”

“Who? You mean Terry?”

In his right hand Mutt raised the bottle aloft in a grand, apostolic gesture.

“Our Lord Jesus when He died to save us …”

Katie pushed him away with loathing. “Oh, get away, you—you
slob!
”

Mutt drained a last swallow from the nearly empty bottle and crashed it against the tenement wall. “Tippi … tippi … tan … tippi … tan …” He picked up his persistent lament and wandered back into the coal shed to sleep off his fears and burrow in his visions.

The space between the tenements, built back to back, led into a narrow alley. Katie thought she heard a sound in that direction and hurried toward it, calling Terry’s name. As she neared the alleyway, Terry answered her in a strained, hurt voice. “I’m over here.”

She ran toward him and found him staring at the lifeless figure of Charley Malloy, hanging by his camel’s hair coat collar from a cargo hook fixed to the wooden alley wall. The usually spotless golden-tan coat was soiled and blood had stained the lapel. Katie gasped but made no other sound. Terry was trembling with hatred.

“I’ll take it out of their skulls,” he said.

“Terry, come back inside.”

“I said I’ll take it out of their skulls. I’ll take this out of their skulls.”

He had the gun in his hand. He kept staring at Charley. He didn’t seem aware of Katie at all. He walked over to the wall and lifted Charley down. He stretched Charley out with his hands folded together at his waist.

“Look at the way the sons of bitches got his coat all dirty,” he said.

“Terry, you’re crazy,” Katie said. “Give me that gun. You sound like you’re going crazy.”

Terry pushed the small revolver securely into his pocket. “Go get the Father,” he ordered. “Tell him to take care of Charley. Charley was a Catholic. He’s got to have it right. I don’t want he should have to lay out in this stinkin’ alley too long.”

He started down the alley toward the street.

“Where are you going?” Katie called shrilly.

“Never you mind,” Terry said. “Just do like I say.” He kept on walking, not once looking back to see if Katie was carrying out his orders and hurrying toward the church. She was, however, running sobbingly through the foul-weather night and reaching the church nearly at the same time Terry was entering the Friendly Bar.

A dozen regulars were lined up at the bar looking at the fight on TV.

“Johnny Friendly here?” Terry said abruptly from the entrance.

Jocko, the horse-faced bartender who was a lot smarter than he looked, couldn’t see the gun on Terry, but he sensed that he had one. In his ten years’ service behind this bar he had become an uncanny judge of these things.

“He’s not in now,” he said curtly. Usually he was a good friend of Terry’s, with plenty of cuff where the kid was concerned. But now he knew things were wrong. He didn’t have to be told. He could smell trouble.

“You sure?” Terry said and slowly walked the length of the bar to the door of the back room. Most of the customers took their eyes off the television screen to watch Terry. When Johnny Friendly was on the warpath, the harbor of Bohegan was alive to it. Some of the regulars even stayed away from the bars. As Terry approached the back door, Jocko reached below the bar and grabbed a wooden ice-crusher he used for a billy. He held it behind his back, waiting to see what the steamed-up kid was going to do.

Terry kicked open the door to the back room so he could have his hands free to fire and use the door as a shield. There was only one occupant, “J.P.” Morgan, spreading his loan slips out in front of him and conscientiously making notations in his little black book.

“Seen Johnny?” Terry said.

“He’s at the fights,” “J.P.” answered without looking up.

Terry went back to the end of the bar and waved Jocko over.

“A double shot.”

“Take it easy now, Terry,” Jocko said.

“Don’t gimme no advice. Gimme the shot.”

Jocko gave a big-shouldered shrug and filled two jiggers.

“Look, kid, why don’t you go home before the boss gets here?”

Terry gulped the contents of the little glasses. “I’m not buyin’ advice, I’m buyin’ whiskey,” Terry said.

“Slow down, boy, down,” Jocko said.

Behind Terry, “J.P.” was soft-shoeing to the phone booth in the corner to warn Friendly. Terry heard him, whirled around and yelled, “Stay out of that phone booth!”

“J.P.” did as he was told.

“Kid, there’s ten bars in every block around here,” Jocko said. “How’s about you go drink somewhere else?”

“I like it here. I like your beautiful face,” Terry said.

Jocko shook his head. He had lived a long time on the waterfront. He had seen Johnny Friendly take over the docks just by walking into this very bar and beating down the tramps who had hold of them back in the late thirties. One of the old mob, Fisheye Hennessey, was chopped right outside on the corner.