The Dream Merchants (55 page)

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It was just a flash. They said more would follow.”

“Keep me posted as soon as you hear any more,” I told him, and started to hang up.

“Hold on a minute,” Irving’s voice said quickly. “The Teletype is going again. There may be something more on it.”

I heard him put down the phone. For a second there was silence; then I could hear the clacking of the machine coming through the wire. It kept up for several minutes, then it was quiet and Irving came back on the phone. “You got something?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “but not much.”

“Read it to me,” I ordered.

His voice was very flat as he read: “The body of William Borden, prominent motion-picture magnate, was discovered dead at one fifteen p.m. today by the New York City police in a cold-water flat on Rivington Street in New York’s lower East Side. He had died of a bullet wound in the temple and close to the body was a police positive .38-caliber pistol. The police believe it to be suicide. Just yesterday Mr. Borden was defeated in court in an attempt to keep his hundred-million-dollar corporation from being thrown into receivership, and the police believe this to be the motive for his taking his life. More to follow.”

I sat very still. Peter would want to know about this. I didn’t want to call him, but I had to. “Okay, Irving,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “Thanks.”

“Should I call you if any more comes in?” he asked.

“No,” I answered wearily. I had heard enough. “Don’t bother.” I pressed down the receiver and held it for a second, then I let it up.

Jane’s voice came on. “Yes, Johnny?”

“Get me Peter,” I told her slowly. While I waited for the call to go through I wondered what Willie’s last day had been like. Last night’s paper had said that he seemed in good spirits, that he planned to carry the fight to a higher court. What had caused him to change his mind and driven him to this, the final, irrevocable act?

From the papers the following day and from what I heard and from what Peter told me, added to what I knew, I began to understand how it had come about.

Willie Borden’s last day on earth started ordinarily enough. He was up early in the morning and had breakfast with his wife. She said he hadn’t slept very well during the night, but in view of what had happened, it was understandable.

His breakfast was hearty, he had a good appetite. He seemed optimistic after his setback and all through breakfast he talked about his plans for the future to regain control of his company. He planned to go in to his office for a few minutes and then to his lawyer’s office to make arrangements for an appeal.

The first thing that appeared which was out of the ordinary was when they called for the car to take Borden into the office. The chauffeur reported both cars to be out of order and Borden decided to go into New York by train. A taxi was summoned to take him to the station.

The taxi dropped him at the station at ten minutes after eight and he bought a
New York Times
at the news-stand. The train came in promptly—for the Long Island Railroad, that is—at eight twenty; it was due at eight fifteen. Willie Borden got on it.

With his paper folded under his arm, he walked back through the train to the last car. This was a special car known to commuters as the “Bankers Special.” It was a comfortably designed car with more space and much more luxurious than the others. All seats in it were reserved for the same passengers every day. For these privileges the passengers paid five times the regular commutation rate, but to them it was worth it. They did not have to scramble with the crowds for a seat. Reservations for this car were made long in advance and it wasn’t open to everyone. Willie Borden was very proud when he had been informed upon his moving to the Island that a place aboard this car was awaiting him. He felt then that he really had arrived.

He took his customary seat in the car and opened his paper. For a few minutes he scanned the headlines, read the account of his case in the paper, and then closed it. He leaned his head back against the cushion and shut his eyes. He was tired because of his restless night and he wanted to get a little rest.

After a while he opened his eyes and looked around him. The usual passengers were in their usual places. He smiled and nodded to several of them whom he knew. They did not return his glance, just looked at him coldly as if he weren’t there.

Puzzled, he wondered at their strange behavior. Just yesterday these men were his friends. They spoke to him and laughed at his jokes and today they acted as if they didn’t know him. Just because he had lost a case in court should make no difference to them. He was the same Willie Borden he was the day before, the same Willie Borden he always was.

He leaned forward and tapped the man in the adjoining seat on the shoulder. “It’s a nice day, isn’t it, Ralph?” he asked with a peculiarly ingratiating smile on his face.

The man lowered his
Tribune
and looked over the top of the paper at Willie. For a moment it seemed as if he was about to answer him, but he didn’t. Instead his face set in cold reproving lines and he raised his paper again without saying a word. A few seconds later he shifted his seat to one farther away.

I often wondered whether Willie would have committed suicide if that man had exchanged a friendly word with him.

Willie’s face became frozen with hurt. He seemed to shrivel back into his seat, and for the rest of the forty-minute trip no one heard a word from him or saw him make a movement until the train stopped and he got out of his chair to leave. The rest of that trip must have seemed like a nightmare to Willie. I knew him. He was essentially a friendly, gregarious little man who liked to talk and laugh. He had a genuine fondness for people, combined with a native talent for getting along with them, which had contributed a great deal to his success.

At his office it was pretty much the same story. He had suddenly became a stranger in his own home. The few people who did stop to talk to him did so with such furtive glances and backward looks to see if they were being observed that even Willie himself terminated their conversations abruptly to spare them further embarrassment.

It was twenty minutes of eleven when he climbed into the taxi in front of the nineteen-story Borden Pictures Company Building and gave the driver an address on lower Pine Street. The address was that of his lawyer’s office, but he never got there.

The taxi sped south on Park Avenue, through the ramp at Grand Central, and into the tunnel at Fortieth Street. It came out of the tunnel at Thirty-second Street and continued down Park Avenue to Twenty-second Street, where the driver made a left turn. The driver made a right turn on Fourth Avenue and followed that avenue down to Cooper Square, where it joined Third. He sped along under the el tracks, and just when they were crossing Delancey Street, he heard a rapping on the window behind him. He slowed down and looked back.

Willie Borden was leaning forward in his seat, looking at him. “I changed my mind, driver,” he said, “I think I’ll get out here.”

The driver pulled the hack over to the curb and stopped. Willie got out. The meter had clocked one dollar and thirty cents. Willie gave him two dollars and told him to keep the change. He turned and walked back to Delancey Street and was lost in the crowds.

He was next seen on Rivington Street just around the corner from Houston, where he stopped at a pushcart and bought two apples. He gave the man a dime and solemnly put one apple in his pocket along with the nickel in change the old man gave him.

He bit into the apple after wiping it on his sleeve and smiled at the old man. “Nu, Schmulke,” he said in Yiddish, “How is business?”

The old man peered at him out of rheumy eyes. His white beard fluttered in the wind as he tried to recognize this person who knew his name. Slowly he walked around the pushcart to see him better. Suddenly his face broke into a wide toothless smile. He threw out his arms. “If it isn’t little Willie Bordanov!” he cackled in the same tongue. “How are you?” Excitedly he grabbed Willie’s hand and pumped it.

Willie smiled, pleased that the old man should recognize him. “I’m all right,” he said, biting again into the apple.

The old man looked at him shrewdly. “It seems funny,” he said in Yiddish, “you should be buying apples from me instead of swiping them.”

“I’m a little older than I was then.” Willie smiled.

The old man shook his head. “Ach,” he said reminiscently, “you were a wild one all right. Always up to something. I had to have a thousand eyes in my head to watch you.”

“Times have changed.” Willie nodded.

The old man came closer to him. Willie could smell his foul breath and see the yellow tobacco stains in his beard. He put his hands on Willie’s coat. “A fine piece of goods,” he said critically, rubbing the cloth between his fingers. “Like butter, so soft.” He squinted at Willie. “
Mocht a leben
in the movie business?” he asked.

“I make a living,” Willie answered, but the smile was gone from his face now. He turned away from the old man and started to cross the street. “So long, Schmulke,” he called back over his shoulder.

The old man watched him reach the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Then he went over to the next pushcart and took the man there by the arm. “Hershel, look!” he said excitedly, pointing with his other arm. “Look over there. That’s Willie Bordanov. He is a
grosse mocher
in the movies! His father and me came on the same boat together. See him? He’s standing in front of that house, he used to live there!”

The other man turned curiously and looked in the direction the old man was pointing. “An ector, is he?” he asked, mildly interested.

The old man looked at him indignantly. “Vot else?”

They turned back to look at Willie Borden. He was standing in front of the building looking up at it. While they were watching, he slowly started to climb up the front steps and disappeared into the hallway.

A woman brushed past him just as he neared the inside staircase. He flattened himself against the wall to let her pass. A loose board in the floor squeaked as he put his weight on it, and a cat, frightened by the sudden noise, jumped from a garbage can behind the staircase and scurried out past him after the woman.

He stopped in front of a door two flights up. He stood there for a moment catching his breath. There had been a time he ran up those stairs three steps at once and never even felt it. He looked at the door for a second in the dim light of the small electric bulb overhead.

He reached into his pocket and took out a key case. He opened it and fished through several keys looking for a certain one. He found it and put it in the lock and turned it.

The door squeaked rustily on its hinges as it swung open and he stood there for a second before he entered the apartment. The apartment was empty. It had been that way ever since his father had died. He had wanted his father to move in with him, but the old man wouldn’t. He was only happy where he was. After he had died, for some unknown reason, Willie had kept on paying the rent every month. It was only nineteen dollars.

He closed the door behind him and looked around the room. The meager furniture was rotting and covered with dust. There was a box standing in the middle of the floor. He walked over to it and looked down on it. It was the box the old man used when he sat
shiveh
for Willie’s mother. He never let it be thrown out. He always kept it there to remind him of her.

Willie put his foot out and turned the box over. A little mouse ran out from under it and into a hole along the floor against the wall. The floor beneath the box was a clean shining square in the dust of the room.

Willie turned and walked through the rooms to the front of the apartment. At the room next to the front one he stopped. This had been his bedroom. His bed was still there. Slowly he rubbed his hands against the wall over the bed, just under the window that separated the two rooms. It was still there.

He struck a match and bent forward to look. In its jumping and flickering light he could read the words. They were carved awkwardly into the wall. WILLIAM BORDEN. He had done it that night he lay on the bed and decided to shorten his name. Make it more American. The match flickered and went out.

He straightened up and went into the front room. There were two windows in it. They were the only windows in the apartment and the rest of the rooms got their air from them. In the summer they used to be opened wide and he would sleep on the floor right beneath them.

The panes were dirty and he tried to peer through them into the street, but he couldn’t see anything. He put his hands on the window grips and tried to lift it. The window was stuck. The air in the room was dank and damp as Willie looked about him for a stick to press against the window.

He couldn’t find one, so he banged his hands against the side and then tried to open it. The window opened suddenly, letting in a gust of air and the sound of the peddlers hawking their wares in the street below.

He stood there by the window looking down. The street below him was lively with color and people. How long he stood there I don’t know. What he thought while he stood there I don’t know, and nobody ever will.

We only know that he reached into his pocket and took out the other apple he had bought from the pushcart peddler and began to eat it. Apparently he had lost his taste for it, because after a few bites he put it down on the window sill.

Then he walked back into the center of the room and from another pocket took out a revolver. The police were never able to find out how he got it or where.

The sound of a muffled shot rang out in the empty room. There was the dull thud of a body falling. Tiny bits of plaster came down from the decaying ceiling and settled on the floor. In the street outside, there was a sudden frightened silence as the noise reached them.

Willie Borden had come home to die. The hard way.

***

“How about the gray one, Mistuh Johnny, the one with the chalk stripes?” It was Christopher’s voice.

I looked up at him blankly. My mind had been far away.