Joey-O
a novel in progress by Earl Coleman

Chapter 3

“Don’t move, Hesh.” Edie finishing. “The light is bad enough.” His right hand on the sink, her instruments and solvents precariously perched in back of faucets, on the ledge, him naked, solid on the plastic seat of the toilet, fresh from their shower, matted chest hair wet. He liked it, being coddled, tended to, Edie with her careless towel open, ripe breast in the dim light of the bulb above the mirror. He liked her fleshiness, the feel of domesticity with her, the dewy brown hair of her crotch, pink fingers working on his square and stubbornly dirty nails.

She shook her head impatiently, ready to give it up. “I could maybe do you better at Gloria’s, but I ain’t never worked on worse. You better leave a heavy tip.” She surveyed his nails once more. “Not bad for shitty working conditions. I love you anyways.” She locked her blue eyes on his. “I like it better dirty nails than you out pulling jobs and maybe getting shot.”

He held her close, wanting to tell her, say, tongue not working, her towels falling off, and thrust his face between her heavy breasts, buried, buried in her flesh.

She heard his breathing change to shallow, felt his iron fingers’ strength, his want, and pushed him off. “Hesh!” She cupped his round face, holding him away from her. “Don’t start again. We gotta leave at ten and I still got my hair to do. Don’t want to give my mom a shit fit middle of the week. Be good. Tomorrow gotta be at Gloria’s nine sharp. She don’t like it when I’m always late on weekdays. C’mon. Down, boy, down.”

He laughed. He didn’t want to but he rose, tumescent, went in and turned the TV on, lay on the bedclothes-tumbled twin to watch. Try to grab another night this week. So much to do. Good thing she understood. He had to make it his way, show he could. Legit. Of course he’d bring Joey along -- no matter that he gave him lip. He’d prove himself for Edie, mom. Prove to Joe he had a brain. Hey! What kind of shit was this? The TV news had just come on. He hated it, the news. Slant-eyed kids were snaking through the jungle in their green fatigues. Gooks, but kids. Combat movies were OK, but this was real. These kids could wind up dead. He flicked it off but found the images junked up his head.

A moment later he was smiling, thinking of their night. She was terrific, Edie. Some might be better looking, younger, she was pushing twenty-five, but no one had more sense. Committed to him. There when he went in the can and there when he came out. Never looked at no one else and doing manicures she met a lot of fancy numbers guys and even businessmen. She told him everything.

Edie fluffed her hair up in the mirror, feeling good. She loved him, loved the feeling of protecting him. Hesh needed it. He needed her. The couple times they’d talked of marriage, not too serious, she hadn’t pushed. She understood the way he felt about his mom, his need to care for her, still live with her to take her to the movies, shul, Joe unreliable. They’d been together now two years. She still had time. She wasn’t going no place. The Skyline wasn’t bad for privacy.

*

Hesh went past the Number Three and Four bays, empty now a little after five. Turned off Smitty’s radio, sloppy worker, always left it on.

McCullough, near-sighted, squinting through thick glasses, hunched in front of paperwork, white shirt, white hair, hand trembled just a little bit he made out checks, his office maybe eight by ten, banged-up calculator, dented metal files, a hundred notices stuck up on windows so you couldn’t even see the bays. Black stand-up telephone, he had it maybe twenty years. A silver cross the center of the wall. A gentleman.

Hesh knocked on the glass door but went right in. McCullough didn’t hear too good so Hesh put his fulfillment sheet on a corner of the old oak desk and waited patiently. McCullough looked up, saw him, smiled, the smile lighting up his face, making deep the crease lines around the eyes. Teeth were stained from heavy smoking. Had a Lucky going now, smoke curling blue. “Heshy, Hesh.” Put big heavily-veined hands on Heshy’s. “Still around, m’boy? Haven’t heard of something they call quitting time?”

“Nah. It’s nothing, Mr. McCullough. Some extra minutes? Where’s the big deal? I wanted to finish with this Job 15 here -- the Ford Fairlane. Some jackass put in the sparkplug wires wrong.” He did it by the book! Felt good about himself. Knew things. Even how to say it right. “Once I figured it out took two minutes to sequence them in the right firing order. Didn’t have to replace nothing. Saved the customer maybe a couple hundred dollars, maybe more.”

McCullough shook his head approvingly. “You’re first rate, m’boy. You do me proud. This is a tough business to find a man as good as you. You’ve only been with me a little more than a month but you’ve made a difference here. You make me feel my energy’s come back, that I can run this business the way I did just starting out: give service, keep the charges down. You understood that coming in and I didn’t even have to lead you there.”

“Thanks. Thank you, Mr. McCullough.”

“You’ve got it printed on your brain the customer is always first. Now Hesh, please go punch out. Take your mother to a movie. Go dancing with your girl. I have this stupid paperwork to plow through so I can shield my money from the thieving tax collectors to make sure they only get what’s theirs.”

Was this the time? Ask now? Should have done it two weeks ago. But now was opportunity. Tongue twisted up in knots as usual. C’mon, Hesh. What did it take? “Mr. McCullough?”

“Yes, Heshy?” Mccullough swiveled toward him in the lopsided chair. Hesh liked that, face to face, not turned away and listening with half an ear, like you were static from a radio.

“My brother Joe. I told you we got busted, right? My twin that I got busted with . . . ”

“Let me interrupt you, Hesh. I was surprised you told me that you’d been in jail, even though it was a minimum-security one. You might have lost out on this job. But that impressed me and I took a chance on you. I’m mighty glad I did.”

“Well -- Joe learned automotive the same place I did but he ain’t situated yet. We got an open bay now Garvey quit last night; I’m thinking -- if you don’t have no one else in mind -- you want to take a second chance? The way you did with me?”

“What did you say his name was? Joe? My hearing’s going, Hesh. The noise has done its work. Is he as good as you are?”

“Well, he’s my twin. Better looking, I’ll say that for him. If you take him on don’t worry, my eyes will never turn away. He’ll have two bosses -- you . . . and me.” Would that be true? Would Joe be pissed because he got this job for him? Could they be close again? He wanted to start building, begin at least to think of building, now! This was opportunity for sure.

McCullough took a drag on his Lucky and leaned back, the bank of smoke three inches deep against the tin ceiling. The smoke he let out in a stream rushed up his nose. He pursed full lips, nodded, thinking, smiled. “Your twin I heard you say? I’m blessed you came to me and that I hired you. So, Hesh, the answer’s yes. Now I’ll be blessed two times over.”

*

Joe, hemmed in by napkins, candles, scalloped plates. Needing to bust out of here, this dining room the size of his whole new apartment they called a studio, like for artists, so they could jack the rent up twice the price, the fucks. The schwartze servant relaying the food. Kingsley kept looking over. Let him look. What could he see? What he had on the inside of his head no one would ever see.

Beth marveling. Joe knew he had to listen. His table manners weren’t much but watch how fast he learned. He tasted dishes cautiously, perhaps all new to him, although she’d made sure that nothing was exotic, candied yams, ham steak and sauerkraut with caraway seeds. Dilled tomato soup. He had to have had tomato soup. She felt protective, flung an imaginary benedictive circle around him. Let him be. He’s good-looking and he’s mine. See how he copes. What he had learned already, diction, the rudiments of manners, was obvious to her even now. I’m crazy, mad for him. The man-ness of him. Ferocious. I feel he’ll eat me up alive and I don’t care.

The fact that there was a part of her that she couldn’t suppress, the part that made her feel like she was slumming, made it all the more exciting, more delicious still.

She caught her mother’s eye on her and realized how good she felt, how she was radiant. They had to have known how unhappy she had been before, and now the transformation Joe had wrought.

“Joe. Beth says you have a twin.”

Joe mulled this over, drinking water. What did Kingsley mean by that? His questions always came out flat but said much more. Is that what hotshot lawyers did? Sneak up on you so you would tip your hand? Like knocking off a store you’d cased, the owner sure that everything was safe -- not thinking what was out there, waiting in the dark. Well, shit on that. “Yes sir. Herschel. Heshy.” He tried to dope him out as he had tried all night. Her father looked like he had been around the block but had a polish to him like his shiny T-Bird. Who was he, underneath, this guy who owned a knockout daughter going to Barnard, a maid, a wife with diamonds slipping down between her boobs? Who was he, looked so high and mighty, like his private barber toweled off his sun-tanned face? You could steal these pictures, furniture -- what would you get? A nickel on a dollar what it’s worth. He owned it. Owned it. He’d always own it and the daughter and the wife. You couldn’t ever steal it. It was his. With more to come.

Joe took another forkful of the sweet potato, munched the thought. Baffled by it at the first. His. You couldn’t steal it. It was his. How do you do that? Nail it down so it was yours? With more to come. What could he learn, what could Beth teach him how to get there, so there’d be things like this he had no one could take away? What was it with these pictures? Here and Beth’s apartment. Paintings said the man you were? What could he copy from this guy in front of him? How to hold a fork? Tuck food into your mouth? That couldn’t be all there was to it. How could he learn the place this power came from? He wanted it. You couldn’t have all this without you had control. Control! It’s what he wanted. Always had. A way to tell this guy that he could fuck himself, him and his barbered face.

The wife. What was her name? Mary: “It must be such a blessing for you, Joe, to have a twin. I’d imagine it would bring a kind of wholeness, a promise of security impossible to duplicate.”

Shit. Where do you learn to talk like that? Is that how money talked? Beth didn’t talk like that. “We’re close, Mrs. Kingsley. Look out for each other. Tight as peas. We back each other up.” Why did he feel like he was shouting in this quiet room, like he was busting cases in a clock shop? Maybe that’s how money talked, like Mary talked, so low you had to strain yourself to hear. He brought his voice down, listened how the words came out. “We work together now.” His head was going. Think! He knew he had to watch the words. He’d learned all that glued tight to Beth. You had to fight if you wanted to call the shots with Beth. And use her weapons. Words. A ton of stuff to get a handle on. He took his time, like eight years old and walking on the sidewalk, keeping clear of cracks, his ears wide open for the slightest sound. Careful! Beth and luck were every second on the line.

“That’s wonderful, Joe. What do you work at?”

Who needed fucking questions? Questions did a B and E on him. Tell them? He looked across at Beth. Her smile said she was proud. Of him. Oh shit. Each time was like the first time when he saw her in the frat and he was hit. No other broad had ever made him feel that way. He wanted it. Wanted her to feel like that. Never gave a shit before how women thought of him.“We’re in the auto business, Mrs. Kingsley,” he answered softly, testing did he say it soft enough.

“The auto business?” Kingsley: “You and your twin Herschel own an auto business? Dealership?”

“No, Mr. Kingsley.” He hesitated for barely a moment. “We work for a man in an auto repair shop.” Why not? -- they’re gonna know it anyway. Advantage of surprise and shock. Do them before they do you. “We’re mechanics, sir. Fix cars.” And then, “That’s how I get these hands.” He held them out. “ No matter how I scrub I can’t get rid of all of it. The rest of me is clean.” He took a bite of ham, looked over at Beth and saw her smile, thinking, he knew, of their bodies in the shower getting clean. Her father’s eyes were directed toward his hands despite his big control. As Joe chewed the ham he wondered again -- was the ham a test, like this evening was a test? He ate anything, so it didn’t matter. But ham? Nah. Beth hadn’t thought. Nuts for him but hadn’t thought. Like people wore two separate heads. Good thing he wasn’t Yussel any more.

Quieter than quiet. Happens when you bust it up for them. Same with teachers. Shock them and it rips their tongue out, don’t know what to say. He liked it, the power of it. The way you could adjust the words, the voice, the minute like a timing belt. Joe studied Kingsley as though he was scoping out a store. Man looked like shit, like here’s his gorgeous princess, Beth, and she was building castles in the mud with someone from the village who had a dirty face and didn’t have a pot. Fuck him! Kingsley with his flushed cheeks, thinking what? His daughter hooked up with a Jewish grease monkey? Maybe angry that it flustered him, his concentration shot to hell?

“Do you have an interest in politics?”

Weird shit. Didn’t know what else to say? Politics? C’mon. Those gonifs? Steal anything that’s not tied down. Kennedy didn’t have to, he was rich. At least his daddy was. What had he read somewhere? The father had run rum and made his bundles in the Crash, some kind of scam, and suddenly his fork stopped halfway up as though a bulb had gone off in his brain, he’d seen it in cartoons. Steal? They steal the sidewalks, houses, all the money in Fort Knox and give it to their friends. Kingsley was a corporate lawyer, Beth said. Politics was money. Kingsley had money clients, lots in the Caribbean, buddies tied in to the politicians. He’s the guy who helps them steal! He’d pegged him now! A thief! Like him! Nah, not quite. Something more than that but he couldn’t get a handle on it. He smiled the smile. Did wonders for his face, the down lines at the corners of his mouth. Made him feel a little better now thinking of Beth’s father as a thief. His brown eyes smiled. His full lips smiled. Looked boyish, open, handsome in a rugged way.

“You’re smiling, Joe. Do you think of politics as funny?” Sounded pissed off now.

“No, sir. No. That’s not what I was smiling at. Politics is serious. Real serious.”

Kingsley appraised him. “We agree on that,” he said a little less tensely. He pursed his lips. Addressed another bite of ham. “Where did you study? To be a mechanic, I mean.”

What was this? A grilling? His parole officer? Study!? Shit. Him and Binky boosting cars since he was thirteen. Study -- in the joint. “I’ve taught myself sir. Pretty much.” And suddenly he felt turned on. He’d figured it. This was a game! That’s what the words were for! He was a player. All you needed were the words. And after you had all the words you had control, but only if you took control. He could play this game. Why not? He had Beth to teach him all the words he didn’t know. And what did Kingsley know except the words? Some law he got in school? He’d match Clinton Street any day against the education Kingsley got. Kingsley’s clients didn’t know the law, that’s why they hired him. He owned a piece of things, this art, this furniture, this room, like they came from a movie just like Beth, but Kingsley’s clients owned him. Bought and paid for. What did his clients need to know to own a piece of Kingsley? Not anything you’d learn in books.

She leaned forward, Mary. Cleavage to her navel. Diamonds dripping fire. “What are your plans, Joe? You seem quite capable. What would you like to do if you had opportunity?”

Beth refolded the napkin in front of her. Folded it again. Mother! Don’t spoil it like you did with Peter, Rich, the rest of them. It’s so embarrassing!

Joe, now feeling surer of himself: “To tell the truth, Mrs. Kingsley, I haven’t thought about it a whole lot but I’m thinking about it now.” He slowed, lowered his voice. “I plan -- but mostly how I’m gonna get enough to pay the rent. I see it isn’t smart of me -- not having any plan, the way you mean a plan. I learned that being here tonight. I learned a lot of things tonight. Important things. I’m going to remember them.” A plan. That was what Heshy told him, wasn’t it? But nah, a plan to work for someone else? What kind of plan was that? Shit, he knew how to make a plan. You case the target, study it. You draw yourself a map. Plan how to get inside. You look for things that could go wrong. You never tip your hand. Then once inside you clean it out and scram. Shit, he could make a plan. But could he make one big enough and could he pull it off? A plan that got you stuff like this no one could steal. So Kingsley would do law for him. It took his breath away, the size of what a plan like that would have to be. If he could make it -- then of course he knew enough to pull it off.

Mrs. Kingsley nodded in acknowledgment of what he’d said. “How nice, Joe. Would all my guests were as gracious. But let me ask -- you’re draftable I assume. Does that concern you, with young men your age being called up and sent off to Vietnam? Not in any large numbers to be sure, but there have been wounded. Young Americans. In your defense, about not having any plan, although I’m sure that you don’t need defending, I can see it must be hard for you to plan ahead for anything at all, uncertain as things are.” She moved her eyes to challenge Beth’s.

Joe’s mind was going a mile a minute. Plan! Not a plan like Hesh’s, work for someone long enough he’ll maybe do a favor, let you in. Had Hesh forgotten all the street smarts that he ever had? Not that Hesh had ever had a heavy brain. Anyway they couldn’t nab them in the draft because they’d served time in the can. But still, hijacking trucks and scoring, that was two-bit. Sure didn’t figure as a plan. Hesh had that part right. Just had the answer to it wrong. Ten to one that Kingsley’s clients had their plan. Not uncertain about anything. He smiled the smile and concentrated on this game around the table. “Mr. Kingsley said ‘politics’. That’s politics. I mean these guys are Commies and we’re stopping them. Only one thing happens when there’s someone stopping you from taking what you want. I guess we’ll have to duke it out. If I’m called I know to hold my own. Been in scraps before.”

Kingsley, nodding vigorously, his face showing his surprise at Joe’s answer: “Well said, young man. I commend your attitude, your straightforward willingness, so absent in most young people these days, pampered, spoiled, everything handed to them, and yet unwilling to repay, wasting time with stupid music and bad art, looking for anything to get them out of serving their country, student deferments, anything. Very commendable. Yes. To honor the call for service if it comes to that.” Looked approvingly at Beth. Bobbed his head.

“Commendable, dad, but wrong,” Beth said. “You know the way I feel about armies and fighting, and I think you had Peter in mind as you were saying that. Not fair. That wasn’t all of him.” Wasn’t it?

“I’m glad to see Joe has more sense than you do, on this subject anyway. What should we do in this case Beth, not in general? Give Asia to the Communists? If Kennedy’s father hadn’t bought the election and if Nixon had been President we’d have been there January 30, 1960.”

“Dropping bombs.”

“Of course. Why get our kids wounded or killed when we can bomb these Commies back into the stone age? We won’t be able to do it with just ten thousand advisors.”

Joe concentrated on his ham steak. Talk back to your father like that? A girl? What was she, some kind of pacifist? It wasn’t the first surprise she’d given him, but still. He caught her eye and saw the fire in it. Hey -- what did this have to do with them, this war? They couldn’t drag him into it, although none of the people around this table knew that. “Your father has a point,” he said. But she was something, wasn’t she, this woman stepped from off the silver screen to be his luck? It couldn’t hurt to score some points and take her father’s side, the fuck. She’d love him anyway.

Beth looked at Joe and frowned, but then said “Dad. To change the subject -- quite a gruesome one. I think Joe may be the competition you’ve been looking for. After supper play a game of pool with him. He has some shots you haven’t seen.”

*

A muffler-cutter was screaming like the El with train wheels cleaving to the rail. An air-impact gun thundered in Bay Two. Then sudden silence like a curtain had been drawn. Almost five o’clock. Hesh walked to Bay Four and Joe. Climbed down into the pit, Joe, sitting on the step, facing the Fleetwood, oil draining from the crankcase in a black stream.

Hesh, trying to keep his anger down. “Ain’t finished yet? C’mon, Joe.”

Joe rose. Taller. Handsome. Lean. His strong chin denied the misleading chocolate of the eyes. “Not fast enough for you? Tough shit. I’m ready to punch out.” He stared hostile into Hesh’s face, just like he’d planned, knowing him, the way he thought. The way to get to him. He’d always known to play this game with Hesh. It was in the timing and the moves ahead. Hesh never was as smart as him. This might be it. The chance he’d figured out and had made happen now. The jobs they’d pulled had always been from his brain, not from Hesh. The jerk was going down a road he thought would take him somewhere good? All bets were off. He’d made his own plan for himself. Plans started somewhere. Here was good enough.

They faced each other in the bottom of the pit, the car above. There were the final noises from the closing of Bay Three. Hesh’s voice was low, intense. “Fuckin’ wise-ass. What takes so long? Two hours for an oil change, rotate tires, tune-up? What? Even you don’t work that slow.”

“Old man tell you check me out?”

“He don’t need to, Joe. I feel responsible for you.”

“So don’t.”

“What are you sayin’ asshole? McCullough treats me like a son, the one he never had. He treats you that way too. He took a chance on us, the time we served and all.”

“What? You told him?”

“Yeah, I leveled with him. Start off right.”

The flow of oil had stopped, now oozed down drop by drop. Joe shook his head. “So you’re a bigger schmuck than I thought you were.”

“Don’t get wise with me, you prick. I got this job for you and all you do for these two months is make me look like shit. You’re every morning late without me there to wake you up. Late back from lunch. Punch out at five but fuck off earlier than that. I see it, what? He don’t say nothin’, McCullough, but he’s gotta know.”

“He don’t say nothin’?”

“No.”

“So that’s OK.”

Oh shit. They used to be so tight. Could be again. His twin, his brother, future partner. He could see the picture of it in his head, making it, but big. Six bays, maybe more. All theirs. There had to be a way. “This Fleetwood that you’re workin’ on.”

“Yeah.” And here it came just like he’d planned. He’d read him right!

“I told you it was promised Monday morning eight o’clock. I told you, Joe. Now what I’m gonna say he asks? You couldn’t get it done all afternoon?”

Joe nodded his head. Pursed his lips. It was a thing that Kingsley did. “OK, Hesh, you’re right. Give me the key. I come in tomorrow, finish up. No overtime.”

“The key?”

“Yeah, Hesh. The key.” The one he’d seen on Heshy’s chain. “Old man lets you have the key to the place -- right?”

“Tomorrow? Sunday?”

“What? I go to church?”

“You gonna come in Sunday finish up? Why not tonight? A fuckin’ crime to have to pay but he’ll pay overtime.”

“I got a date. You need it bad? You finish up.” Had him in his sights just like an F-1 sitting on the rudder of a MIG, gun-barrel poking out. What was Hesh gonna do? Dive or die?

“I can’t. You know we go to shul tonight, it’s shabbos, wouldn’t hurt you came. You want I let you have the key?” Hesh peered into his brother’s face, lit eerily by the drop light, oil drip slowed.

“What you worried, what? I’m gonna steal? What’s to steal? Some tools? A sledge? Beat up equipment? What?”

Too fast. Not ready for it. Wished for Edie here so they could talk. Slow it down he wanted. Slow it down. To say, it didn’t matter what, get back the way it used to be with them. “We never see you now you don’t live home. Not even holidays. What is it -- you’re not Jewish any more? Can’t come with us to shul? Your mama worries.”

Joe turned away as if to make sure the oil was drained. Questions. All the questions. But Hesh would do it. He’d make book on it.

Joe? Come in on Sunday finish up? He frowned. McCullough promised Monday morning. Had to be. Call ma and stay? C’mon. If he couldn’t trust Joe with a lousy key then how could they be partners, the possibility as big as an unlocked window and the loot inside. He tugged the key ring from his pants, slid off the brass one to the entry door. “Joe.”

Joe turned to him.

“I’m giving you this key. Don’t do nothin’ I look bad, you hear?”

1 2 3 4 5 6

back to top