Part 6

"So he called just before you came here, said he'd got worried about his bet on Birthday Boy and wanted to change it a little. Said he gave you five besides a one tip, all on the horse's nose. Got a little doubtful about the hunch and wanted to play the six across the board. And I had a hunch about _you_, Ray-boy--that you've dragged down on me before by playing bookie on your own. I decided to see if you'd give me that six bucks. I gave you every break, even asked you, God damn it, if you had anything else to tell me. Waited till you were clear out the door before I sent Bill to get you back. And what happens when I get you back? You know I've got something on you and you pop off on a deal I wouldn't of known about otherwise. And then stand there with your bare face hanging out and swear Connolly's is the _only_ bet you ever dragged down." He held up the wallet. "How many other bets from today and tonight you still got in here?"

"None, Joe. Honest to God, I--"

"Shut up." Joe Amico opened the wallet and, without taking them out, checked the bills in it. "Fifty bucks. How much was Connolly's bet, and on what? Don't bother lying because I'll check with Connolly on it."

"Thirty," Ray said miserably. "Thirty across, on Blue Belle. Fifth, Aqueduct."

Amico put the wallet down on the desk beside him. "Bill," he said, "take thirty-six out of that. Make slips on both bets--you heard 'em. Then give him his wallet and his lousy fourteen bucks change back."

Monahan went around behind the desk.

Ray said, "My God, Joe, I know this looks like I was dragging down on you on purpose, but--"

"Shut up. From now on don't say a God damn word, till I finish and ask you if you understand, and then you damn well better say yes. Just yes and nothing else.

"Somebody else taking bets in my name, dragging down on me, that's one thing--_the_ one thing I won't stand. Don't matter if it's six bucks--that's all I knew about for sure at first--or thirty-six or a million. Or six cents, for that matter.

"We're through, Ray-boy, finished. You come around here with a grand in cash and want to lay it, I don't take it. I don't deal with chiselers.

"I made you a nice easy deal--four months I'd of took to get all that four-eighty at thirty-five bucks a week. I meant it and you could of had the deal, but at the same time I was testing you, to see if you were going to give me that lousy six bucks. I knew if you ever dragged down on me you would tonight, on account of you're behind the eight-ball."

Monahan came around from behind the desk and held out Ray's wallet to him. Ray took it and put it back into his pocket with a hand that was shaking badly.

Joe Amico was saying, "Do I have to tell you that deal's off now? You got a new deal and here it is. I want that money, _all_ of it, by this time tomorrow night. You got twenty-four hours to raise it. I don't care how you raise it. Sell your car. Sell your wife. Rob a bank."

"Joe, I _can't_--"

"I said shut up. Bill, if he opens that yakker of his again put a fist in it. Ray-boy, I almost _hope_ you can't. Because I'll get a four-eighty kick outa what I'm going to do if you don't."

He looked at his wrist watch. "Just twenty-four hours from right now I start putting out the word that you're marked lousy, that you're a cheap crook and a welsher besides. I start with all the tavern and liquor store owners I know--and I know plenty. Chuck Connolly will be on top of the list. I tell 'em if they're friends of mine they won't deal with a rat like you. I'll ask 'em to pass the word to the other guys in their racket, the ones I don't know. And some of the boys, the ones I know best and do business with, are going to phone in your boss and complain about you, about the way you treat 'em, the way you act in their joints.

"It'll take a little while for the word to get all the way around, but you'll be lucky, Ray-boy, to make fifty bucks in commissions next week or to hold your job for two weeks.

"Oh, and you'll never lay another bet, even if you ever get any money to lay. I do know every other bookie in town and they come right after the bar owners. And I know who at least some of your friends are, too, and I spread the word there. By a couple weeks from now you won't be able to sit in even a penny-ante stud game in a private house.

"Okay, that's it. Now you can talk--one word and it better be yes, and no more than that. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Ray said. Hopelessly he turned to go; nothing he could possibly say would help right now, even if he dared to say it.

"Not quite yet," Amico said. "Bill, touch him up a little. Take it easy and don't mark him. Just something to help him remember."

Ray had sense enough to know that it wouldn't do any good to fight back; he'd get hurt worse if he did. He stood still and tried to make himself limp when Big Bill's left hand grabbed a handful of the front of his coat and shirt, thinking that if he went down from whatever came first maybe they'd let it go at that.

But what came first was a pair of flat-handed slaps to the face--back of the hand to one side, palm to the other. Slaps that rocked his head, stung like hell, and made his ears ring.

Then Big Bill, still holding with his left, pulled his right hand back and drove a fist like the business end of a battering ram into the pit of Ray's stomach. The pain was so great that, as his hands went to his stomach, he tried to double over and would have except for the big hand still holding his clothes bunched in front of his chest. From somewhere miles away and through a haze of redness he heard Monahan's voice say, "Enough, Joe?" and Amico's voice say, "Yeah. Put him in a chair. Don't put him out in the hall till he can walk. We don't want him laying on our doorstep."

He was in a chair and nothing was holding him now; he could double over forward in the chair and he did. He was retching. From somewhere not quite so far away he heard Amico's voice again. "And don't let him out till you're sure he won't puke on the hall carpet, either. If he pukes in here keep him till he's able to clean it up."

He heard a door open and close; Amico had gone back into the bedroom. He heard a phone ring and then Big Bill's voice answering it and then saying, "Ten to win on Rawhide in the fourth, twenty to show on Dark Angel in the seventh. Right, Perry."

He could straighten up now, and he wasn't going to puke. His stomach still hurt like hell and his cheeks stung and his ears rang, but he thought he could stand up now. He _had_ to stand up and get out of here fast. For a moment he couldn't remember why, and then it came to him. His date with Dolly. She was his only chance now, or the only one he could think of. Joe Amico had meant every word he'd said.

He raised his arm to look at his wrist watch. Yes, he could still make it in time if he was lucky in catching a taxi quickly outside. Lucky that this was Willis Street and taxis were fairly frequent. He put his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up. Not quite straight; the pain in his stomach made him bend forward a little at the waist.

"You okay?" Big Bill asked him. His voice was impersonal, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

"Sure. I got to get out of here. I'm going to be late for a date if I don't leave now."

"Walk back and forth a few times. When I see you can navigate, okay."

He was a little tottery walking across the room the first time, better coming back. After a few trips he was walking almost normally, as much as it hurt him to do so.

Big Bill got up and went to the door and opened it. "Okay, Ray. No hard feelings?"

"No," Ray said.

As he walked through Big Bill said, "Believe it or not, I pulled my punch on that poke in the gut." And then, before Ray could answer, not that there was anything _to_ answer, the door closed behind him and he heard the chain slide into the slot.

No stairs this time. He went to the shaft of the self-service elevator and pushed the button. The indicator showed that it was on the top floor, but it started down. He leaned against the wall opposite the elevator door to wait for it.

Suddenly he remembered something and reached for his wallet. Amico had told Monahan to take thirty-six out, but what if Monahan hadn't put back the change? But Monahan had; the wallet held a ten and some singles. Fourteen lousy bucks.

He _had_ to get money from Dolly now. And he might as well try for five hundred while he was at it--what was to lose trying? If he got that much--and he'd offer _any_ kind of interest to get it--he'd stay out of the poker session and not risk losing any of it. He'd keep it intact to be _sure_ of being able to pay Joe tomorrow.

But fifty or a hundred wouldn't do him any good with Joe, so if that was all he could get, running it up would be his only chance.

_Dolly, Dolly_, he thought, _please, Dolly. Be like the mistress of the man in the French short story._

The elevator came and the door slid open automatically. He stepped inside.

A minute later he was at the curb, looking frantically both ways for a taxi. None was in sight and he ran, doubled over a bit because his stomach hurt, to the corner, where he'd have a better chance of flagging one.

8:47 P.M.

See now as through a defective windowpane that lets in light but distorts the images that the light bears. See now into Benny Knox as he himself sees out. See a twisted cosmos peopled by phantoms who buy newspapers as they pass and then are seen no more, except for a few who come regularly enough to become real for a while and to be remembered most of the time. Through this pane Benny sees a frightening but basically simple universe run by a good God of Vengeance when sin is done.

But first let us see him from the outside, as others see him. Benny Knox was born thirty-five years ago to a mother who died in bearing him, her firstborn. His father was a Baptist minister, a fiery fundamentalist to whom Heaven and Hell were fully as real as Earth. His father, who never remarried, raised him.

During infancy he seemed perfectly normal and not only seemed but was perfectly healthy and he was always big for his age. If during the next years, those of his preschool childhood, signs of retardation began first to show and then to multiply, his father, who after all had no standard of comparison, failed to recognize them.

The fact that he was retarded wasn't known until he was entered in the first grade of school (his father hadn't 'believed in' kindergarten; all they did there was let children play and Benjamin already knew how to play). Within a month he had been examined by a school psychologist and the Reverend Matthew Knox had been called in for conference and advised to send his son to a special school for subnormal children.

Benny had attended that school for eight years, until he was fourteen. Then the school's principal had told Benny's father: "I'm afraid we've done all we can for Benjamin. He has approximately the equivalent of a third-grade education. Perhaps a little better than that in some subjects--such as reading and arithmetic. Not so good in some others, subjects that require memorizing, such as geography or spelling.

"Socially, the picture is neither too good nor too bad. He gets along reasonably well with people, especially his contemporaries, but only when circumstances force him to. He greatly prefers solitary occupations and activities. He seems to daydream; whether or not that will decrease or increase as he grows older, only time will tell.

"Morally--well, he's almost too good. It's obvious that he had very strong religious training at home and is--well, almost too literally convinced of everything he was taught."

The Reverend Matthew Knox had frowned slightly. "What he was taught at home _was_ literally true," he had said.

"Of course. But, unless tempered with reason, some of the teachings of Christianity are--ah--hardly survival characteristics in our society. Or in any society for that matter. Generosity is a virtue, for example, but it must be practiced with moderation. Recently I happened to learn of a boy having come to school without his lunch. Not, mind you, because his parents are poor; they aren't. Just because he forgot it. Benjamin gave the boy his lunch and went hungry that day. When I learned of it I talked to him and explained that while it would have been a good thing for him to share his lunch with the boy he should not simply have given it away and gone hungry himself. There have been other such instances but that's the most recent one."

Benny's father had nodded thoughtfully. "I'll talk to him about it," he said. As a matter of fact, he already had, a great many times. Benny simply couldn't keep such things as baseball gloves, roller skates or kite reels, and when something was gone it was always because he had given it to a poor boy who didn't have one. Several times, when Benny knew the name of the poor boy and where he lived, the Reverend Knox had gone and got the article back; never had he encountered any poverty more real than his own. He had finally solved the problem--and without crossing Benny's desire to give to the poor--by issuing and occasionally repeating a flat order to the effect that before he gave anything of his to a poor boy he should bring the boy home with him; he would then talk to the boy and decide whether or not the boy was really poor and needed the article in question worse than Benny did. With rare exceptions, when Benny had forgotten, this had worked. Apparently none of the boys who had been taking advantage of Benny had wanted to face an inquisition at Benny's home first. But apparently Benny had not known that this edict had extended to school.

"And there is one other thing," the principal was saying, "that troubles me about Benjamin. I must say that it troubles me _much_ more than his indiscriminate generosity--for I believe you can train him out of that without too much difficulty. He has a tendency to confess to having done things he did not do. His teacher tells me that several times when some prank or bit of minor vandalism has been committed she has talked to the class about it and then asked whoever was guilty of it to raise his hand; each time Benjamin's hand went up. And each time some minor punishment was meted out to him for what she believed he had done. Then one day the prank in question happened to be one she knew positively Benny could not have done, and he still raised his hand. It was a caricature of the teacher drawn on the blackboard during lunch hour and it was rather well done for a child's drawing; Benny is very poor at drawing. The teacher sent Benjamin to me to have a talk.

"His answers to me were vague and confusing. I honestly don't know whether he knew he was innocent and had some compulsive reason for offering himself as a scapegoat--perhaps guilt feelings about something else--or whether he really thought, once the question was put to him, that he had really done it."

The Reverend Knox was troubled; this was something new to him. True, whenever he had asked Benny whether or not he had committed some certain dereliction, the answer had almost always been affirmative, but he had never questioned the boy unless he was already reasonably sure Benny was guilty, so the affirmation had never been a surprise. He asked, "Could Benjamin have been with the boy who made the drawing--aided and abetted him, as it were--and thus felt that he shared the guilt and have raised his hand for that reason?"

"No. Once the teacher seriously considered drawing styles, the identity of the culprit became obvious; only one boy in the class could have done it. Once the question was put to him directly he confessed--as a matter of fact he was justifiably a little proud of the drawing--and admitted that another boy had been with him but it wasn't Benjamin. Benjamin hadn't even known of the drawing."

"I'll have a talk with him," Benny's father had said.

And he'd had a number of talks with him during the first year or two Benny was out of school. He'd made a number of tests, too. For example, if he himself should accidentally break a drinking glass in the kitchen, later he'd show Benny the broken glass and ask if he had done it. All too often, for a while, Benny would admit guilt. This always led to another and longer talk, and finally he felt sure that he had cured Benny of this fault--and he had, for a long time. Like the principal, he had never been able to decide whether Benny had deliberately made a false confession to court punishment or whether he really thought, when asked, that he had committed the offense in question.

He had given thought, too, to Benny's being able to make a living for himself in the world. At first, since Benny was too young for a full-time job, he had bought him a newspaper route. After a few mistakes, Benny had done all right on it. It was teaching Benny responsibility, he thought, and the five or six dollars a week it brought in helped out immeasurably. After a while the only help he needed was to be reminded once a month when it was time to make his collections.

When Benny was sixteen and already bigger than most men his father decided that it was time to help him find a niche in the world in the way of a full-time job. The good minister was himself in failing health and beginning to realize that, by the time of his own death, Benny's needs must have, not only a means of earning a full livelihood, but a way of living alone without constant parental care and advice. The only alternative would be, after his own death, for Benny to be institutionalized and become a public charge. This was to be avoided if at all possible. Over the course of the next two years he found Benny a variety of jobs--in vain. Benny could handle almost any of them, with constant supervision, but no employer could afford an employee whom he had to watch all the time. Even at manual labor jobs, although he was plenty husky enough to handle them, Benny managed to get into trouble. Set him to digging a ditch and he would dig it into the next county unless you were there to stop him.

When Benny was eighteen and had never held a full-time job longer than a few weeks, and few that long, the Reverend Knox learned that he had only about six months to live. Fortunately, at about the same time, he chanced to learn that an elderly man who for many years made a living running a newspaper stand on a busy downtown street corner was about to retire and wanted to sell his business. Newspapers were the only thing Benny had ever got along with; if he could run a newspaper route maybe he could sell newspapers over a counter. In some ways the latter was even simpler. Every transaction was a simple cash deal instead of a more complicated monthly collection. Knox had a long talk with the retiring vendor, and bought the concession. The seller stayed on for a few days to show Benny what ropes there were. Knox saw the circulation managers of the two newspapers Benny would handle and the manager of the distribution agency that supplied him with the items he would sell; with each of them he arranged to have Benny's bills sent to the parsonage. There was nothing to it, and Benny got along fine from the start. Each evening he brought home his receipts for the day and turned them over to his father, who took care of paying his bills and managed his money for him, starting him out each day with the amount and variety of change he'd need to start business at the stand.

There remained only one problem to solve before he could die, and Knox had had its solution in mind for a long time; he had waited only until he was sure his son could earn a living. A Mrs. Saddler, a widow and a good woman, was a member of his congregation and she ran a boarding house within walking distance of downtown. He went to see her and made arrangements for Benny to room and board with her, and for her, for a small but adequate percentage of Benny's earnings, to take over the management of his affairs.

That, too, had worked out. Each night he brought his money home to her, as he had to his father. She managed it for him, took out what she had coming for room and board, gave him an allowance of spending money--which went for candy and ice cream sodas, his only dissipation--bought clothes for him when he needed any, and put the surplus in the bank, part of it in a special checking account against which she drew for his business expenses, the rest in a savings account in his name--but which she reminded him of only when some extra expense or minor emergency necessitated his help in drawing some of it out.

This accomplished, the Reverend Knox had quit fighting the Reaper. He had given up his ministry and his parsonage, had gone to a hospital and died.

And all had gone well for fifteen years, until Benny Knox was thirty-three. On the surface anyway; Mrs. Saddler sometimes wasn't sure what went on down inside of Benny when occasionally he had dark, unhappy, brooding spells; she wasn't able to get him to talk about them although ordinarily he prattled to her freely about anything and everything. And nothing had ever come of the spells; they'd always worn off.

Until suddenly at the height of one of them Benny, she subsequently learned, had gone to the police station one morning and had confessed to having committed a murder that had been much in the newspapers for two weeks. It had been, according to how one might look at it, a bad time or a good time for him to have confessed to that particular crime; the police had just apprehended the real killer only an hour before; the news had not yet hit the papers or Benny would have read about it. Benny did read the newspapers during dull periods at the newsstand--the parts of them that he was able to understand and make sense of, which included crime stories and the comic page and not much else.

The police knew who Benny was and what he was; after fifteen years his downtown newsstand was a landmark and just about everyone in town knew him by sight. Many policemen knew him well enough to stop and talk a moment when they were passing his stand. So they brushed Benny off gently. They asked for his wallet and looked at the identification in it to see if it had an "in case of accident or illness notify" card with a name and address and it did. They phoned Mrs. Saddler and, after talking to her long enough to establish her relationship with Benny, they explained to her what had happened and asked her to come in and talk with them, after which she could take Benny back home with her. Which she did. And she talked to him until he was finally convinced that he had just imagined what he had tried to tell the police. Or perhaps he was not completely convinced until he read an afternoon paper with the story of the capture and confession of the real killer. Along with many people with higher I.Q.'s than his, Benny believed implicitly everything he read in print.