The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [268]
“I got a little business I want to discuss with you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Sure. I just quit my job and I want to hitch up with you. I’m a useful guy.”
Studs laughed at the close-up of Spike’s face.
“Look, boys, it wants to join up with me,” the King said, and his mob erupted into stage laughter. “Kindergarten classes is on Sunday. Ho! Ho! Come on, keep it up, sonny, I haven’t laughed so much since my aunt died,” the King continued, again drawing the raw laughter of his mob.
“Which one of you muggs wants to be the chief attraction at his own funeral?” Joey hissed, glaring from face to face, his fists itchy for action.
“Listen, punk, scram!” a beefy gorilla snapped, towering over Joey.
“Keep those mitts of yours in women’s pocketbooks where they belong and you won’t get your puss marked up like a cross-word puzzle.”
“What?”
“You heard me!”
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Maybe we can use the kid,” the King said in a measured voice.
That was nerve! If he could have busted into something big that way, he’d be much better off today. But Studs Lonigan wasn’t Joey Gallagher. The picture was too interesting for him to sit brooding, and it carried him along. His mind became like a double exposure, with two reels running through it. He saw Joey Gallagher as the hero, and he saw himself in Joey Gallagher’s boots, and Studs Lonigan and Joey Gallagher together leaped up the career of gangdom’s adventurous ladder to fame.
They hijacked. They spoke with crisp hard words, and with barking gats and tattooing machine guns, bumping off friends and foes, letting nothing get in their way. Ah, that was the kind of a guy Studs Lonigan wanted to be, really hard and tough, afraid of no goddamn thing in this man’s world, giving cold lead as his answer to every rat who stepped in his way. Getting clothes, too, like Joey Gallagher, riding in the same doggy automobile, turning corners on two wheels, and the hell with traffic cops, giving the heat to another mugg who got soft with cold feet. This was a picture. Why hadn’t Studs Lonigan lived like this? And the blond, tall, with those swaying hips. Joey was laying her, too, and he would be, if he was Joey, laying a tall blond in a satin dress with hips on fire, if he, if he was only Joey Gallagher. And again going out, with the gat on his hip, a man’s business. Would he get it himself this time? How did a guy get the guts that a gangster like Joey in this picture had? But gangsters did have it. That was what was wrong with Studs Lonigan. No guts. But Joey had it. And now here in this show, Joey Gallagher and Studs Lonigan were together, the two of them were one, racing across the screen, and the dough was rolling in, and the blond she was sweet, and she was his, laying only for him, and oh, goddamn it, this was the real ticket.
Wearing a gray suit, a gray fedora tilted over the left side of his face, Joey Gallagher strode confidently down the same street where he had appeared as a boy. He stopped, looked across the street at a sign board.
THE WORLD IS YOURS
He smiled, tossed away the cigarette. His face took on an expression of recognition, and a policeman rheumatically stepped up to him.
“Getting along these days, aren’t ye, lad?” Mr. Kennedy said.
“Oh, so-so.”
“Better watch your step, me lad.”
“Nobody’s got nothin’ on me.”
“Son, now take it aisy. Aisy, lad! I see ye with the King and his boys. Now, take the advice of one that’s in this game longer than yourself, and take it aisy, me lad. I’m tellin’ ye for your own good.”
The policeman wagged a sad head as Joey confidently passed along. The scene dissolved, and Joey entered the modest home where his mother sat knitting, and his shirt-sleeved brother read a newspaper.
“Mother, you old skate, I have a present for you,” Joey said, bending down to kiss her and dropping a fat roll of bills in her lap.
“No, son, I can’t,” she said in the choking voice of a mother’s sadness.
“Mother doesn’t need tainted blood money,” the brother curtly said, arising. “Look! Tell me you don’t know anything about it!” the brother challenged, handing Joey the news-paper.