IF ANYBODY ASKS

211. 'IF ANYBODY ASKS....' (nyc, 1968)

'No one ever trembled like the executioner of an innocent man' I was told one night by Maxie Blanck who ran some sort of numbers racket out of the back room of 228 e. 50th Street a restaurant or something like it with music and dance on the side and there were always cars coming and going out front and women coming in with big smiles and red lipstick and furs and stuff and the men nearby all had shady names and dark suits and smoked cigars and no matter how often I regarded the scene there I was unable to figure exactly what was going on until that one night after Maxie inexplicably had said that to me he took me aside and give me two 50-dollar bills to get in the car with Frankie O'Malley and Teddie the Fender and take the ride up to Kingston and back and so I did - all in one long night - but we were accompanied by some old boxer guy named Cudgel or something and he was shaking violently and nearly crying the whole trip up and all the other two guys did was basically ignore him until we got there when they trundled him off to the back of some bank building where some other guys were waiting for them and after about twenty minutes (when I was told to step outside and just keep on eye on the car and the street for no reason at all - and that always confused me because I'd not been told what to watch for or who or how to make contact with them if I'd seen something amiss) they came back without Cudgel and handed me a package wrapped in brown paper along with a small valise and said 'hold this until we get back - get in' which I did and nobody talked nearly the whole time and when we returned I handed everything off to Maxie and he patted me on the back and said 'good job now beat it' and so I did and I never was sure of what I heard was correct or not but I was later told that there was ten thousand dollars in the valise and Cudgel's two hands in the paper sack but that was NOTHING I never proved or not.
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Sometime about then I realized that when I dreamt all I ever dreamt of was words - sheets and sheets of black and white opaque words coming down in a flash that never made any sense but that I always found myself reading aloud almost phonetically and getting nothing from and it was either that or very very old places which no longer existed but with both of them I was satisfied and with both of them I still live today.
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"If anybody asks you went to Albany for steaks."