Part 24 (1/2)

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Willie hits a newsstand, buys all the papers, folds them into a thick wad under his arm, walks to Times Square. He gets a room in a flop, spends two days combing the wants. Bus driver-experience. Griddle man-experience. Child caretaker-experience, references, background check.

In the margins of one cla.s.sified section he drafts a letter to Bess. He runs out of room, out of words. He tosses the newspaper aside.

On the third day, when he goes out for food and the evening papers, he steps into a speak. Orders a beer, opens the paper. GANGLAND SHOOTING IN PHILADELPHIA. Police say Hughie McLoon, local saloonkeeper, was gunned down outside et cetera. Willie shudders. He imagines Hughie's machine-gun laugh being cut short by the real McCoy. He feels a moment's pang of conscience, but he reminds himself: nothing he could do.

He flips to the wants. Dishwasher-experience required. Fry cook-references. Landscape gardener-hmm. Small Upper East Side firm seeks man. Must be knowledgeable about shrubs, flowers. Funck and Sons. Ask for Mr. Pieter Funck.

Willie goes to the drugstore on the corner, buys a tin of shoe polish. He s.h.i.+nes his one pair of shoes to a high gloss, hangs his release suit neatly over the chair, hits the sack.

At first light he rises, breakfasts on water from the tap, walks uptown, forty blocks. The address is 42 East Eighty-Sixth. An old redbrick building. On the third floor he finds a frosted door stenciled with the name FUNCK. He discovers the apparent proprietor behind an industrial desk that holds an adding machine, an ashtray, several skin magazines. Examining one magazine through a magnifying gla.s.s.

Pieter Funck?

What do you want?

I'm here about the job?

Sit.

Funck stows the magazine. Willie takes a wooden chair. The office smells pleasantly of potting soil and hay. I'll tell you straight, Funck says-no sons.

Excuse me?

Funck and Sons, I got no sons. I thought and Sons gave the business cla.s.s, but Mrs. Funck is not fertile and so now you're knowing and I don't want you later asking me where are the sons and calling me liar. I can grow anything, anywhere, except a baby inside Mrs. Funck.

Forty, gone to fat, the shape and color and texture of a mushroom, Funck rambles on and on in something like English. He says he came to America eight years ago from Amsterdam, and he's still not fluent. No fooling, Willie wants to say. When he's not bunching words in strange cl.u.s.ters, Funck is planting them upside down in sentences, their roots showing. And yet sometimes they thrive. He says he learned landescaping back in Holland. He says he knows everything worth nosing about tulips.

Eventually the interview goes the way Willie feared. Funck asks about Willie's recent experience. Willie takes a cleansing breath. On the level, Mr. Funck, I've spent the last four years in prison.

Hurrying to bridge the inevitable silence, Willie swears he knows landescaping, knows it well, learned it from a fellow inmate, Charles Chapin.

The editor? Funck says.

Willie nods.

Funck leans back in his creaky wooden desk chair. A row of cigars pokes from his s.h.i.+rt pocket, all different sizes, like a cigar skyline. Say now how do you like that, he says. I followed the Chapin case real close.

Well, I can tell you, he's a very interesting man. His gardens are- I'm all the time wondering how many men dream of doing what Chapin does. It's taking real guts, no? To b.u.mp off the missus? How many thousands of husbands you think watch their wives asleeping and fantasy about putting in the brain one little bullet? And then the crabbing is stopping forever, no? Heb ik gelijk? How wives crab, am I right? All the time wanting something, but when you are wanting something, say a little affectioning, they can't be bothering? Too busy crabbing!

Willie straightens his necktie, tugs his earlobe, focuses on a spot in the wall just behind Funck's head. Mrs. Funck, he thinks, should not buy any green bananas.

Funck flips through a card file, says he's got just the thing for Willie. Samuel Untermyer, he says. Big-shot lawyer. You ever heard of his house up in Yonkers?

No sir.

Greystone it's called. This place you never seen nothing like. It's the Eden Garden. Dozens of men it's taking to keep this place shape s.h.i.+p, so Untermyer is using lots of firms, us including. I'm sending a crew every two days and this day I'm short. One of my mens is having a rupture. So. You take his place. Tomorrow morning, four o'clock, if you're late you're being fired.

Photographer is looking out the back window, changing lanes, trying to exit the highway. He checks the clouds. Hey, Willie? Couldn't we just swing by the scene of the Schuster murder real quick? While the light is good.

You and your light.

The light right now is ideal, Willie. Look. Look at that sky, brother.

Haven't you learned anything so far from Willie? You make your own light in this f.u.c.kin world.

Willie is an hour early for his first day. He carries a kerchief, an apple he found in the trash, a dog-eared copy of Cicero. He's still wearing his release suit.

Funck smacks his palms against his cheeks. A suit? Jezus the Christ! Greystone is not formal gardens!

These are my only clothes, Willie says.

Funck loans Willie gray coveralls, gardening boots, a hat. Willie climbs into the back of Funck's truck, which seems made of cardboard and pie tins. There are four other workmen sitting along a wood bench. None says h.e.l.lo. An hour later, just as the sun is rising, the truck rolls through the front gate of Greystone and Willie can't help himself-he gasps. Funck lied. This isn't the Garden of Eden. This makes the Garden of Eden look like Irish Town. There are Grecian temples, Roman statues, marble rotundas, fountains of burbling silver water and brightly colored tile. There are dark green ponds dotted with lily pads and calm ponds of limpid blue. There must be one of every flower and tree in existence, and every variety of hedge and bush, trimmed and planed into all manner of sizes, shapes. And containing it all, lending it all a touch of drama, is a sheer cliff that plunges straight down to the majestic Hudson.

The foreman is a tall man with a neck goiter the size of a radish. He starts Willie mulching, raking. Willie quickly breaks a sweat. It feels good to be using muscles, breathing hard. He whistles under his breath, lost in the joy of having a real job. Until the workman on his right interrupts.

Foreman's a p.r.i.c.k, the workman says.

Oh? Willie says.

Don't get on his bad side. He'll fire you for nothing. Less than nothing. Sick wife? Sick kid? He don't care.

Okay. Thanks for the warning, friend.

Some place, eh?

Yeah. Beautiful.

You know how many rhododendron they got in this joint?

No.

Thirty thousand. You know how many tulips?

Nope.

Fifty thousand.

That a fact?

You know how many fireplaces?

Nuh-uh.

Eleven. One's made of rubies and emeralds.

Really?

You know how come Old Man Untermyer built these gardens?