Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [7]
tell by looking at him he was a high class guy. And he always spoke to the boys on the street. He wasn’t like some of them (mostly the older guys), who would do business with Ed, say business at the bank or insurance or something on that order, but they wouldn’t even see Ed when they met him on the street. Or even guys who didn’t know Ed, they would call up and say this was So-and-so, president of such and such a company, and could Ed do them a favor and get a case of genuine Scotch at a good price. In the early days Ed would try to put himself out for the respectable people, the ones that thought they were high class. But Ed saw it didn’t pay; they didn’t appreciate it when he did them a favor, and they didn’t even say hello to him the next time he saw one of them on the street. So there were only a few of the Lantenengo Street crowd who could get a favor out of Ed without paying cash on the line for it. But Julian English certainly was one of them. And it wasn’t only because he spoke to you; it was the way he did it. He spoke to you like a human being, and now and then he even sat down for a cup of coffee with Ed. That English, he s my boy, Ed once said, and that was enough. For my money, Ed said, I will take that English. He s a right guy. That was plenty. In Ed s position you had to be a good judge of what a man was like, and the English was copacetic. And Al agreed with Ed. Not that it would have made any difference if he didn’t agree with Ed. You either agreed with Ed, between Reading and Wilkes-Barre, or you got a job in the mines. That was the least that could happen to you if you didn’t agree with Ed: you just weren t in the mob any more. The worst could happen to you was you would get held by a a couple of the boys while a couple others kicked you till they got tired kicking you, and then they would put a couple of slugs in you and that was that. But Ed very seldom had occasion to do that kind of thing. In the beginning, yes. There were several cases that the state police were still bothering about that Al knew more about than he wished he knew. That was when Ed was beginning to organize booze and the girls and the numbers racket. He had to put the screws on a few people here and there, or they would have become pests. You had to be tough in this business, or you weren t anything. You didn’t get anywhere. Just the same, you had to be regular, you had to be on the up-and-up with those that treated you right. Al Grecco turned up his coat collar. He had felt a chill, and even though there was no one else in the car he felt a little ashamed, because he recognized that the chill was kid stuff; the way you feel when you have done something very good for somebody, or the way you feel about your mother. That was the way he felt about Ed Charney. He felt loyal. Recognizing this he wanted to do something to show how loyal he could be, and the nearest thing at hand that gave him any chance to do something for Ed was the champagne. He turned to see that the champagne was still covered with blankets and secure against bumps. Ed would want that goods delivered in the best possible shape. Then he remembered the sedan, with English in it. He reduced his speed to thirty miles an hour and allowed the sedan to overtake him. In a short time the sedan did overtake him, and Al Grecco could see by the way English was driving that he was sore about something. As a rule English was an artistic driver, as good to a car as men used to be to horses. And this particular job that English was driving was a demonstrator, which he kept tuned up all the time. But now English shot the car up over a rut and pushed through a six-foot drift in passing Grecco. Not that there wasn’t plenty of room, and not that Al Grecco wouldn’t have moved over or stopped if English had blown his horn. English didn’t blow his horn, though. He just tramped on the gas and gave the sedan hell. The sedan hit the drift with a hard wallop, swaying from side to side, and almost as soon as he hit the drift and punched a hole in it, English swung the steering wheel and got back