Billy Bathgate Read Free Page B

which brings about the ineptitude for life that creates art, invention, great fortunes, and the murderous rages of the disordered spirit. I am not suggesting this as an absolute law or even a hypothesis that can be proved or disproved; it is not a notion from the scientific world but more like an inkling of a folk truth of the kind that seemed reasonable enough before radio. Maybe it was something that Mr. Schultz himself perceived in the unconscious genius of his judgments because up to now I knew of two murders he had personally committed, both in the region of the neck, the throttling of that Fire Department inspector, and the more viciously expedient destruction of a West Side numbers boss who was unfortunate enough to be tilted back in a chair and having himself shaved in the barbershop of the Maxwell Hotel on West Forty-seventh Street when Mr. Schultz found him.
    So I suppose the answer to his regrettable lack of elegance was that he had other ways of impressing you. And after all there was a certain fluent linkage of mind and body, both were rather powerfully blunt and tended not to recognize obstacles that required going around rather than through or over. In fact it was just this quality of Mr. Schultz’s that Bo Weinberg now remarked upon. “Think of it,” he said, addressing the cabin, “he makes this cheap dago move on Bo Weinberg, can you believe it? Only the guy who took out Vince Coll for him and held Jack Diamond by the ears so he could put the gun in his mouth. Only the guy who did Maranzano and bought him a million dollars of respect from the Unione. Who made the big hits for him and covered his ass for him, and found the Harlem policy he was too dumb to find for himself, who handed him his fortune, made him a goddamn millionaire, made him look like something else than the fucking lowdown gonif he is—this shmuck from the gutter. This bullethead. Listen, what did I expect, pulls me out of a restaurant in front of my fiancée? Women and children, anything, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t know any better did you see those waiters cringing, Irving, you weren’t there you should have seen those waiters trying not to watch him shovel it insitting there in his Delancey Street suit that he bought from the signboard.”
    I thought whatever was going to happen now I didn’t want to witness; I had scrunched up my eyes and instinctively pressed back into the cold cabin wall. But Mr. Schultz hardly seemed to react, his face was impassive. “Don’t talk to Irving,” he said by way of reply. “Talk to me.”
    “Men talk. When there are differences men talk. If there is a misunderstanding they hear each other out. That’s what men do. I don’t know what you came out of. I don’t know what stinking womb of pus and shit and ape scum you came out of. ’Cause you’re an ape, Dutch. Hunker down and scratch your ass, Dutch. Swing from a tree. Hoo hoo, Dutch. Hoo hoo.”
    Mr. Schultz said very quietly: “Bo, you should understand I am past the madness part. I am past the anger. Don’t waste your breath.” And like a man who has lost interest he returned to his seat along the bulkhead across from me.
    And from the slump of Bo Weinberg’s shoulders, and the droop of his head, I thought it might be true of a man of rank that he would be naturally defiant, and it might furthermore be true that he would exhibit the brazen courage of a killer of the realm for whom death was such a common daily circumstance of business, like paying bills or making bank deposits, that his own was not that much different from anyone else’s, as if they were all a kind of advanced race, these gangsters, trained by their chosen life into some supernatural warrior spirit; but what I had heard had been a song of despair; Bo would know better than anyone there were no appeals; his only hope would be for a death as quick and painless as possible; and my throat went dry from the certainty that came over me that this was exactly what he had