Free Beggarman, Thief by Irwin Shaw Page B

Yugoslav Tom had the fight with wasn’t going to be there—the police’ve been hunting for him ever since they talked to him the day after the murder and they ain’t found any trace of him yet. And I never saw the guy, anyway, and neither did Wesley, we wouldn’t know him from Adam, even if he was standing along the bar right next to us with a spotlight on him. It wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for me, but what’s the harm, a couple of drinks and then home to bed and a hangover tomorrow and that’s it?”
    “I understand, Bunny,” Rudolph said, shivering. “You couldn’t do anything else, given the circumstances.”
    Dwyer nodded vigorously. “Given the circumstances,” he said.
    “How did the fight start?” Rudolph asked. Dwyer’s excuses for himself could wait until another day. It was four in the morning and he was cold and Wesley was inside the police station and maybe the cops were working him over. “Was it Wesley’s fault?”
    “Fault? Who ever knows whose fault it is when something like that happens?” Dwyer’s mouth quivered. “We were standing at the bar, not saying anything to each other, maybe after two, maybe three whiskeys, we were on Scotch now, Wesley wanted Scotch—he didn’t seem drunk—that kid must have a head like iron—and there was a big Englishman next to him, and he was drinking beer and talking loud. He was off some ship in the harbor, you could tell he was a seaman, he was saying something about Americans in English to the girl, I guess it wasn’t very complimentary because all of a sudden Wesley turned to him and said, quiet-like, ‘Shut your big trap about Americans, limey.’”
    Oh, God, Rudolph thought, what a time and place for patriotism.
    “It was something about how the Americans let the English fight their war for them—Wesley wasn’t even born then, what the hell did he care? Christ, his own father would never’ve had a fight in a bar if ten Englishmen said Americans were all yellow pimps and whoremongers. But Wesley was spoiling for a fight. I never saw him fight before—but Tom told me about him and I could see the signs and I grabbed his arm and said, ‘Come on, kid, time to go.’ But the Englishman, Christ, he must’ve weighed two hundred pounds, thirty, thirty-two years old, drinking all that beer, he said, ‘Would you repeat that, please, sonny?’ So, nice and calm, Wesley said, ‘Shut your big trap about Americans, limey.’
    “Even then, it could’ve been avoided, because the girl kept tugging at the Englishman’s sleeve and saying, ‘Let’s go home, Arnold.’ But he shook her off and said to Wesley, ‘What ship you off, mate?’ and I could see him reaching, slow, toward the beer bottle on the bar. ‘The Clothilde,’ Wesley said, and I could feel all his muscles tensing up in his arm. The Englishman laughed. ‘You better be looking for another berth, sonny,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe the Clothilde is going to be a popular ship from now on.’ It was the laugh that got Wesley, I think. He reached out sudden and grabbed the beer bottle first and cracked it across the man’s face. The Englishman went down, blood all over him and everybody screaming all around and Wesley started stomping him, with the craziest expression you ever saw on a boy’s face. Where he ever learned to fight like that nobody’ll ever know. Stomping, for Christ’s sake. And laughing, crazy as a bedbug, with me hanging on him to pull him back and making no more impression on him than if I was a mosquito buzzing around his neck.
    “It didn’t take long. There were two cops in plainclothes at a table and they jumped him, but he got one good punch in on one of the cops and the cop went down to his knees. But the other cop got out a billy and clouted him on the neck and that was the end of the match right there. They hauled Wesley away and into a police car outside and they wouldn’t let me come with them, so I just ran to the police station and an