Pell plucked the Homburg from my fingers, and went behind the keyrack. I followed him immediately, but he had already begun his vandalism and nothing was to be gained by interfering with him. I could only stand and watch as, over and over, until the fine silk lining was a mess, he stamped the name E.J. HEBERT in the a.s.sistant manager's hat.

"Now," he said, "you and I had better get out of here. We don't want to be around when Old Mushmouth comes after his lid."

"You're telling me," I said.

We hid on the mezzanine directly above the cashier's cage where Hebert was working. We waited, listening to the occasional thud as Hebert used his stamp. The a.s.sistant manager returned and they conversed briefly. Then, seeing that neither Pell nor I were around, the A.M. asked Hebert to hand him his hat.

"Certainly, sir," said Hebert. And still carrying his rubber stamp, he went around behind the keyrack.

Pell and I returned to the lobby, he by the front stairs, me by the rear. I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, but Pell took up a position on front post, only inches away from the window where the a.s.sistant manager was waiting.

Hebert came back with the hat, carrying it tenderly crown-up as he had found it. He pa.s.sed it through the window.

"Ankyou," grunted the a.s.sistant manager, starting to lift it to his head. Then, he paused, eyes popping, ana said, "Wottnell!" He looked up, glaring terribly at Hebert, and an almost subhuman growl came from his throat.

Hebert smiled nervously. "Something wrong?" he said.

The a.s.sistant manager made no answer. He simply grabbed Hebert by the necktie, hauled him halfway through the window and began beating him with the hat.

The room clerk was taken completely by surprise, but he was not too dazed to see that Pell had somehow inspired the a.s.sistant manager's attack. So he grabbed the bellboy by the collar and dragged him into the fray. For every blow he received he gave one to Pell, and Pell, tangled between the two men and helpless with laughter, was powerless to resist.

The a.s.sistant manager tried to shove him out of the way, the better to get at Hebert. But the clerk hung onto him. Pell was jerked back and forth, catching the blows intended for Hebert as well as those intended for him. And as the struggle waxed furious, an ink pad flew from his pockets and a rubber stamp with it.

Panting, the a.s.sistant manager released his hold on Hebert and made a grab for Pell. "Bstd!" he snarled, flinging himself at the bellboy. But fast as he was, he wasn't quite fast enough.

The last I saw of Pell he was heading for the rear landing, and the a.s.sistant manager was right behind him, aiming a kick at his fleeing posterior at every third step.

20.

A few years ago I met one of the boys-by then a man, of course-I formerly hopped bells with. He was the owner of an automobile agency in a large southwestern city, and I was also enjoying some small success. Naturally, we fell to discussing the other boys we had known, those whose later lives were familiar to us.

One had been killed by the FBI while resisting arrest as a suspected kidnapper. One had been hopelessly crippled while attempting to blow up a safe. Two had committed suicide when still very young men. One had overdosed himself with salvarsan, bit his tongue off in a spasm of agony and drowned in his own blood.

Not a very pretty picture, but that was only part of it. Another boy of our acquaintance had become a renowned geologist, another a doctor and another a minister. Two others were managers of large hotels.

"All in all," my friend said, "I suppose about as many of us turned out all right as didn't. About the same percentage you'd find in any other group."

"That's true," I nodded, "the percentage is the same. But I don't think you'll find the division within another group so drastic. Take a bunch of grocery clerks starting out togethei or a group of filing clerks or service station attendants. Some will get ahead, some won't. But the spread between them won't be small and gradual. Five of them will die violent deaths while the other five become relative big shots."

My friend frowned, thoughtfully. "Y'know," he hesitated, "it's kind of like it was on the job, isn't it? There wasn't any middle ground. You were either in or you were out."

"That's the way it looks. It did you a lot of good or a lot of harm."

"Which do you think it did you?"

"Well," I said, "I'm here."

In most pursuits, temptation stands on the sidelines. It does not grab but beckons, and once pa.s.sed it is gone. But it was not thus in the luxury hotel of my day. Temptation followed you, placing herself in your path at every turn. And, paradoxically, succ.u.mbing to her often meant a reward, and resistance, punishment.

You worked in the hotel, but you worked for the guests. Your earnings, your very job depended upon their good will. So why offend a wealthy drunk by refusing to drink with him? Why snub a lovely and well-heeled widow when it was so easy to please her? And what about these people, anyway? If they were all wrong-these publicly acclaimed models of success and deportment-then who was right?

There was an unhealthy tendency to acquire complete contempt for the monied and a consuming regard for money. Money was apt to mean far too much and people nothing.

Living in a world of topsy-turvy standards and constant temptation, a boy could easily become involved in serious and long-lasting trouble. To survive in that world he had to be very, very lucky and have a fair degree of intelligence. But more than anything else, he had to be able to "take it," to absorb the not-to-be-avoided abnormal without being absorbed by it. Or, to state the matter simply, he needed a strong sense of humor.

If he had that, he was usually all right. Far from harming him, the hotel life would do him a lot of good.

It was during the big conventions of business and fraternal organizations that, as the saying was, the men were separated from the boys. They descended upon the hotel on an average of twice a month, and I grew to look upon them with a kind of delighted horror. They meant much money, but they also meant wracked nerves and utter physical exhaustion. All the incongruities and inconsistencies of hotel life were multiplied a dozen times over.

A day or so before a convention started, the hot-shots would drift into town. These were the professional bellboys-men-who traveled the country over and made a career of working the conventions. They knew all the angles and they played them all. They had to.

All bellboys paid a daily "tax" or "kick" to the captains for the privilege of working. The convention hot-shots not only paid this, but they also paid for their jobs. During an oil men's convention, for example, a four-day job sold for two hundred dollars plus a daily tax of ten dollars.

Since selling jobs is a federal offense, the question of what happened to all this money is one I consider too delicate to answer. But I will say that no hot-shot ever successfully appealed a bell captain's decision to the management. And one of the captains told me he was "G.o.dd.a.m.ned lucky to hang onto a third of the take."

The hot-shots received nothing for their money but the hotel's permission to go to work. There was no guarantee that they would not be fired or jailed thirty minutes after they stepped on the floor. There was no guarantee that they would be able to get-or hold onto-a uniform to work in. That was their headache, something to be worked out between them and the regular bellboys.

There were never more than twenty-five uniforms-but the number of bellboys during a convention often rose to a total of forty. And while the hot-shots were tough, the regulars were no pantywaists. So every change of shift marked the beginning of a battle with as many as three boys struggling for the same uniform.

Lockers were broken into. Tailor shop employees were threatened and bribed. Boys were tripped up and knocked down and sat on and stripped of their uniforms. One did not enter the locker room unless he was prepared to do battle.

Not all the quarrels arose over uniforms. Gypping on bells was the order of the day, and if a guy didn't like it he knew what he could do about it.

Those fights. They were strange, hideously fascinating affairs.

The combatants-to-be would first remove their uniforms and stow them away for safekeeping. Then, wordlessly and without preliminary, the fight would start. Its one rule was that no blows could be struck to the face. A knee in the groin was all right. A kick in the instep was all right, or a rupturing punch to the kidneys or a paralyzing blow to the heart. But a man's face must never be marked.

The fighters would weave their way through the crowded locker room, here pa.s.sing in front of a boy who was shaving, there squeezing between a pair who were fastening one another's collars. No one paid any attention to them. No one tried to interfere. Everyone had more than enough to do to take care of himself.

Since all the boys were above average toughness and since one rarely knew a dirty trick unknown to the other, the fights usually ended in some kind of compromise. A no-gyp compact would be sworn to or an agreement would be arrived at whereby a uniform and a workingshift were shared. Often it was that way, but not always. Inevitably, some of the hot-shots were driven on and some of the regulars driven out.

Everyone had it in for everyone else. No matter what he made, no one was satisfied. There were thousands of dollars in cash among the bellboys as the end of a convention approached, and every boy knew it and wanted it. Not just part, but all. This resulted in twenty-four-hour-a-day dice games in the locker room. Some of the biggest games I have ever seen, and I have seen some big ones.

The play would go on and on, with the players dropping out when they lost the dice, hopping bells for an hour or so, then getting back into the game as their turn came again. It was an all-or-nothing contest. No man was allowed to quit winner as long as the others wanted to play. If one was forced to drop out of the game, his winnings were impounded with one of the captains.

They could be maddening things, those "last man takes all" games. With forty boys involved, the odds were forty to one against your being the final victor. Yet I could never keep my money in my pocket where it belonged.

I would come down at night, and lay bets while I dressed. I might be cleaned out immediately, but more often than not I would win. Five hundred, a thousand, fourteen or fifteen hundred. But always the time came when I had to quit-leaving my winnings with the captain. (The captains, I should say, were well-chaperoned during their comings and goings.) When the end of the convention came, and the final game with it, I sometimes had two or three thousand dollars "riding." And I would envision myself as that lucky last boy, a teenager retired on a modest fortune. Now, however, "piker bets" were disallowed. You faded what the other man wanted to shoot-and what he often chose to shoot was the exact amount of your winnings. The others had come into the game with big bankrolls and added to them. They could double up and triple up on the bets, cleaning you-or I should say, me-out in minutes. And, needless to say, they invariably did.

Still and all, thanks to a confidential talk with Allie Ivers, I did not do too badly in these games. I never got out with my temporarily won thousands. But by the process of "rat-holing"-surrept.i.tiously palming an occasional ten or twenty-I often got away with hundreds.

The cops on the beat were aware of these dice games and frequently came in for a few minutes to watch the play. On the whole, they were like most of the other cops I have known-good, honest fellows doing a hard and thankless job at low pay. But there was an exception in the person of a cop called Red, a husky giant with close-set eyes who had admittedly donned a shield for what he could get out of it.

Red was always gambling and losing, then lying about the sum he had lost and grumbling that the game was crooked. He was always begging for a few dollars to get back into the game-the loan being repayable on a tomorrow that never arrived. The boys sneered at him, insulted him, profanely refused to fade when he was shooting. Still Red hung on, a whining, grumbling, insult-proof sponge.

I had been bell-hopping for something more than a year when Red tried to tap me for ten dollars. I told him to go to h.e.l.l. More accurately, I told him I wouldn't lend him the sweat from my socks if he paid me Niagara Falls for interest.

"Why, Jesus Christ!" I protested, my voice cracking with irritation. "What's the matter with you, anyway? You're a cop-you're supposed to be someone. How in h.e.l.l can you hang around here begging money from bellboys?"

"Aw, come on," he insisted, not in the least embarra.s.sed. "What's ten bucks to you? You've got plenty of dough."

"Nothing doing," I said. "You've already four-bitted me out of five or six bucks. Chisel someone else."

"I'll pay it back. First thing tomorrow."

"Nuts."

I went on dressing, trying to ignore him, but he wouldn't give up. He didn't want the money to shoot c.r.a.ps with, he said. He didn't even want it for himself. He needed it for his wife and baby, for some medicine and groceries.

"Wife and baby?" I said. "I didn't know you were married."

"Sure, I am. Been married right along. Come on, Jimmie. I wouldn't ask you for it if I just didn't have to have it."

"Well," I hesitated, "I've got a family of my own to take care of. If I was sure you'd pay the dough back-"

"Tell you what I'll do," he said promptly. "I'll hock my night stick with you. That's good security. You know I can't get by working very long without it."

"All right," I said. "I think I'm making a mistake, but-"

I gave him the ten and locked his night stick in my locker.

When I came to work the following night, the locker had been broken open and the club was gone.

I was pretty sore, to put it mildly. But the situation appeared to have its bright side. Having done this to me, Red would doubtless steer clear of the hotel for some time to come.

I was starting to change clothes, consoling myself with the thought of Red-free nights sans whining and begging, when the locker-room door opened and in he came. He was grinning broadly. The night stick was dangling from his wrist.

"About that club," he said. "A fellow over at the station house had an extra he wasn't usin'. He gave it to me."

"I see," I said.

"So I guess I'll just let you keep that other one."

"All right," I said.

"You don't mind, do you?" he grinned. "That's all right with you, ain't it?"

"Supposing it wasn't?" I said.

"Yeah?" He chuckled. "Supposin'?"

He went out, laughing openly. I went on dressing. I'd paid ten bucks to get the horse laugh, and I had to like it. I'd been dared not to like it.

Allie Ivers had come onto the night shift with me and knew of my loan to Red. He was as chagrined as I when I told him how Red had repaid the favor.

"You're not going to let him get away with it, are you?" he demanded. "Don't tell me you're just going to grin and take it!"

"What else can I do?"

"Fix the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's clock! Make him wish he'd never been born!"

"Yeah? And how am I going to do it?"

"I'll think of something," Allie promised.

He did think of something, and before the night was over. I listened to his scheme incredulously, by no means sure that he wasn't joking.

"You're kidding." I forced a laugh. "We can't do anything like that."

"Sure, we can," said Allie. "I'll get this babe I know to give him a fast play, make a date with him. She'll give him the number of one of the rooms the hotel's blocked off for the summer. When he comes in here-you'll have to slip him upstairs, of course-I'll-"

"But a-a cop!" I protested. "My G.o.d, Allie-to do that to a cop!"

"He's no cop. Wearing a uniform doesn't make a man a cop. What's the matter with you, anyway? I'm trying to do you a favor."

"Well, I-"

"I thought you trusted me."

"Well, I-"

I was still less than seventeen years old. And seventeen is seventeen, no matter what it has been through or up against. Moreover, despite my patent hardheadedness, I suffered from a deeply rooted feeling of inferiority. I wanted to be liked, and felt impelled to defer to those who gave me liking.

So I consented to Allie's plan. Two days later, at about two-thirty in the morning, Red beckoned to me furtively from the lobby side entrance.

I went out to the walk. He pressed a ten-dollar bill into my hand.

"Just playing a little joke on you," he said, giving me an amiable nudge in the ribs. "Okay? We're friends again?"

"What do you want?" I said.

He told me-although, of course, I already knew. Suddenly, as though it were another's voice speaking, I heard myself refusing.

"You've got no business up there. No one's got any business there. Those rooms are blocked off. They're too hot to stay in this time of year. Why, they haven't even got any bedding in 'em, and the telephones are discon-"

"Oh, yeah?" He grabbed me roughly by the arm. "Don't hand me that stuff! I got plenty of drag around this town. You try to c.r.a.p me, an' I'll make you hard to catch."

"All right," I said. "If that's the way you want it."

He went around to the rear entrance, and I took him upstairs on the service elevator. He followed me down to the hall to a small court room. Then, dismissing me with a contemptuous nod, he tapped on the door. It opened, and he stepped into the darkness.

There was a dull thud and a grunt, and the door closed again.