Rich Man, Poor Man

“What’d you tell him?”

“I said maybe I knew a place where I could get hold of you. He’s coming back in a half hour. You want to see him?”

Thomas thought for a moment. “Why not?” he said.. “If it’ll make the sonofabitch happy.”

Pappy nodded. “I’ll bring him up when he comes,” he said.

Thomas locked the door behind him. He felt the stubble of his moustache, decided to shave. He looked at his face in the peeling mirror in the grimy little bathroom. The moustache was ridiculous. His eyes were bloodshot. He lathered up, shaved. He needed a haircut. He was balding on the top of his head, but his hair hung halfway down over his ears and over the collar of his shirt in back. Pappy was useful in many ways but he didn’t give haircuts.

The half hour took a long time passing.

The knock on the door was not Pappy’s. “Who’s there?” Thomas whispered. He was uncertain about the tone of his voice after not talking to anyone but Pappy for a week. And you didn’t hold long conversations with Pappy.

“It’s me. Rudy.”

Thomas unlocked the door. Rudolph came into the room and Thomas locked the door before they shook hands. Thomas didn’t ask him-to sit down. Rudolph didn’t need a haircut, he wasn’t going bald and he was wearing a pressed seersucker country-gentleman kind of suit because the weather had turned warm. He must have a laundry bill a yard long, Thomas thought.

Rudolph smiled tentatively. “That man downstairs is pretty mysterious about you,” he said.

“He knows what he’s doing.”

“I was here about two weeks ago.”

“I know,” Thomas said.

“You didn’t call.”

“No.”

Rudolph looked curiously around the room. The expression on his face was peculiar, as though he didn’t quite believe what he saw. “I suppose you’re hiding from somebody,” he said.

“No comment,” Thomas said. “Like they say in the newspapers.”

“Can I help you?”

“No.” What could he say to his brother? Go look for a man called Falconetti, longitude 26.24, latitude 38.31, depth ten thousand feet? Go tell some gangster in Las Vegas with a sawed-off shotgun in the trunk of his car he was sorry he’d beaten up Gary Quayles, he wouldn’t do it again?

“I’m glad to see you, Tom,” Rudolph said, “although this isn’t exactly a social visit.”

“I gathered that.”

“Mom is dying,” Rudolph said. “She wants to see you.”

“Where is she?”

“In the hospital at Whitby. I’m on my way there now and if you …”

“What do you mean dying? Dying today or dying next week or dying in a couple of years?”

“Dying any minute,” Rudolph said. “She’s had two heart attacks.”

“Oh, Christ.” It had never occurred to Thomas that his mother could die. He even had a scarf that he’d bought for her in Ca

“I know you’ve seen her from time to time,” Rudolph said, “and that you’ve written her letters. She turned religious, you know, and she wants to make her peace with everybody before she goes. She asked for Gretchen, too.”

“She doesn’t have to make her peace with me,” Thomas said. “I got nothing against the old lady. It wasn’t her fault. I gave her a rough time. And what with our god-damn father …”

“Well,” Rudolph said, “do you want to come with me? I have the car downstairs in front of the door.”

Thomas nodded.

“You’d better pack some things in a bag,” Rudolph said. “Nobody knows exactly how long …”

“Give me ten minutes,” Thomas said. “And don’t wait in front of the door. Drive around for awhile. Then in ten minutes come up Fourth Avenue going north. I’ll be walking that way, near the curb. If you don’t see me, go back two blocks below here and drive up Fourth Avenue again. Make sure the door on the right side isn’t locked. Go slow. What kind of car you got?”

“A Chevrolet, 1960. Green.”

Thomas unlocked the door. “Don’t talk to anybody on the way out.”

When he’d locked the door again, he threw some things into his shaving kit. He didn’t have a valise, so he stuffed two shirts and some underwear and socks and the scarf, wrapped in tissue paper, into the bag in which Pappy had brought the last bottle of bourbon. He took a gulp of bourbon to steady his nerves. He decided that he might need the whiskey on the trip, so he put the half-empty bottle in another bag.

He put on a tie and the blue suit which he had bought in Marseilles. If your mother was dying you had to be dressed for the occasion. He took the Smith and Wesson out of the dresser drawer, checked the safety, stuck it in his belt, under his jacket, and unlocked the door. He peeked out. There was nobody in the hallway. He went out, locked the door and dropped the key into his pocket.

Pappy was behind the desk but didn’t say anything when he saw Thomas going through the lobby carrying the shaving kit under his left arm and the paper bags in his left hand. Thomas blinked as the sun hit him outside the hotel. He walked quickly, but not as though he was trying to get away from anything, toward Fourth Avenue.

He had only walked a block and a half up the Avenue when the Chevy drew up alongside. He took one last look around and jumped inside.

Once they got out of the city he began to enjoy the trip. The breeze was cool, the countryside light green. Your mother was dying and you were sorry about that, but your body didn’t know anything about mothers dying, it just knew it liked to be cool and moving and out of prison and breathing country air. He took the bottle out of the bag and offered it to Rudolph, but Rudolph shook his head. They hadn’t talked much. Rudolph had told him that Gretchen had remarried and that her husband had been killed not long ago. He also told Thomas that he had just gotten married. The Jordaches never learn, Thomas thought.

Rudølph drove fast and he concentrated on the road. Thomas took a swig from the bottle from time to time, not enough to start getting drunk, just enough to keep him feeling good.

They were going seventy when they heard the siren behind them. “Damn it,” Rudolph said, as he pulled over to the side.

The State trooper came up to them and said, “Good afternoon, sir.” Rudolph was the sort of man cops said, “Good afternoon, sir,” to. “Your license, please,” the trooper said, but he didn’t examine the license until he’d taken a good look at the bottle on the front seat between Rudolph and Thomas. “You were going seventy in a fifty-mile zone,” he said, staring coldly at Thomas, with his wind-beaten face, busted nose, and his Marseilles blue suit.

“I’m afraid I was, officer,” Rudolph said.

“You fellas’ve been drinking,” the trooper said. It was not a question.

“I haven’t touched a drop,” Rudolph said, “and I’m driving.”

“Who’s he?” The trooper pointed with the hand holding Rudolph’s license at Thomas.

“He’s my brother,” Rudolph said.

“You got any identification?” The trooper’s voice was hard and suspicious as he spoke to Thomas.

Thomas dug into his pocket and produced his passport. The trooper opened it as though it were loaded. “What’re you doing carrying your passport around?”

“I’m a seaman.”

The trooper gave Rudolph his license, but put Thomas’s passport in his pocket. “I’ll hold onto this. And I’ll take that.” He gestured toward the bottle and Rudolph gave it to him. “Now turn around and follow me.”

“Officer,” Rudolph said, “why don’t you just give me the ticket for speeding and let us go on our way. It’s absolutely imperative for us to …”

“I said turn around and follow me,” the trooper said. He strode back to his car, where another trooper was sitting at the wheel.

They had to drive back more than ten miles the way they had come, to the State Troopers’ barracks. Thomas managed to get the pistol out from under his belt and slide it under the seat without Rudolph’s noticing it. If the cops searched the car, it would be six months to a year, at least. Concealed weapon. No permit. The trooper who arrested them explained to a sergeant that they had been speeding and that they had committed a further violation by having an opened bottle of liquor in a moving vehicle and that he wanted a sobriety test run on them. The Sergeant was impressed by Rudolph and was apologetic, but he smelled both their breaths and made them take a breathing test and he made Thomas piss in a bottle.