The Penny Ferry da-2 Read online

  One could say that Moe is antimaterialist. He claims that cluttering your life with too many possessions fetters your mind and soul. Aside from the old Airstream and the battered Dodge sedan

  (1963, white over blue), he has nothing.

  I rang the little cowbell and waited. Above the door, painted in Gothic letters, was the vehicle's name: "Der Schleppenwagen."

  Moe says that there are three basic ways to measure a person: by what he is, by what he does, arid by what he has. The first is the most important, the second slightly less so, and the third almost meaningless. America's primary fault, he says, is that it foolishly persists in paying attention solely to the third item. Remembering this made me feel guilty again that I had so much, and I thought of Bartolomeo Vanzetti in his little rented room in Plymouth, giving the kids dimes. Moe was like him. Moe was like Thoreau too, with a modern-day, riveted-aluminum version of Henry David's hut.

  A gravelly, irritable voice answered my yank on the cowbell.

  "Who's dat?"

  "Electrolux!" I chirped.

  "Oh yeah? Well make like a vacuum and suck. I'm busy."

  "It's me."

  The curved slab of aluminum opened and Moe's angular, bearded face peered out. He was dressed in a soaked running suit.

  "Oh hiya, Doc. What brings you here? Some masochistic desire for humiliation at the chessboard?"

  I entered the tiny residence, which was akin to boarding a miniature, stationary airplane. I stood next to him but detected no locker-room stink from the sweat-soaked garments which I hadn't been washed in weeks. Moe runs over fifty miles a week and his sweat has about as much poison in it as distilled water. He rattled a metal Band-Aid box at me. It had a coin slot gashed in the lid and was wrapped with tape. It was his charity-of-the-month box. I heard the rattle of the coin of the realm inside. I pointed at the battered tin box.

  "What this time?"

  "Saint Bonaventure's Home for Runaways."

  "Since when are you giving to Catholic charities? You're not Catholic."

  "So? A runaway is a runaway. Let's have it." He rapped my trouser pockets with his knuckles. No coins. He glared at me. "It'll take folding green, Adams. Gimme a bill. One wit' double digits?

  He took my ten-spot and folded it quicker than a beer vendor at Fenway, stuffing it into the slot. We were standing in the tiny galley kitchen of the trailer, whose cracked and crumbly linoleum counters were littered with banana peels, orange rinds, yogurt cartons, sprouts, granola, chocolate bars, and thick dark breads. All around us hung bags and baskets of dried fruit. On the tiny icebox was a photo of Albert Einstein. Underneath was a clipped headline message that said SMARTY PANTS. I grabbed a handful of dried apricots and followed Moe through a bead curtain, past the minuscule bathroom, and through his bedroom.

  "Is someone in there?"

  "Uh-huh. My friend is taking ga shower in there. Come on out back."

  Whoever his friend was, he was a shrimp; the tiny shoes Moe kicked aside showed that. We went through a rear door of the Airstream, which connected it to the addition Moe had built to double the size of his dwelling, leaving it tiny rather than microscopic. The addition was a single room, twenty feet square. Three of its walls were bookshelves, broken only by windows, paintings, and stereo equipment. The fourth was glass and screens that slid open. The view was of the woods and goat corral. A wood stove provided heat; its big black box crinkled and tinked, and the air above it danced. The tiny color television was on; Moe was listening to Dr. Mortimer Adler discussing ethics. Another of Moe's aphorisms is that the amount of contentment and happiness you get out of life is directly and inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend worrying about yourself or trying to make yourself happy. Seek happiness, he says, and you'll never find it. Seek the welfare and happiness of others and you'll have more happiness than you'll know what to do with.

  He is probably right about this. I say he's probably right because I have never known him to be wrong about anything. I suppose the idea is rather akin to that of Zen. Happiness, says Zen, is not seeking or expecting it. So these Zen Buddhist monks sit around in orange robes and shaved heads, keeping terrible hours and a starvation diet, whopping each other with bamboo stakes. Hey, c'mon and get happy…

  "Wanna play?" Moe growled, hauling out the chessboard from beneath a photograph. The photograph was taken in 1967 and shows Moe with his then wife, standing in front of their big house in Lexington. A Mercedes and a Jag are visible in the picture off to one side. Moe is clean-shaven besuited, and trying his best to hide his strained smile. This is Moe Abramson in his former life- Moe

  the Big-shot Psychiatrist. The material success was supposed to make him happy but it didn't. Underneath this portrait was another clipped-out headline: WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING?

  Moe and his wife split and he underwent a startling metamorphosis, a reincarnation of the personalities in part of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Thoreau, St. Francis, and Florence Nightin gale. The only trouble with Moe is that he's the world's biggest soft touch. Moe's such a sap he'd buy tickets to the Arsonist's Ball, bless his heart.

  As he set up the wooden pieces I heard a soft patter of feet behind me and turned to see Moe's friend. Her long hair flowed over her shoulders and almost covered her breasts. But not quite.

  As for her bottom half, it remained in full view as she swung into the room, making no attempt to cover herself.

  "Doc, this is Loretta Popp. Lolly, this is my friend Doc. Lolly honey, I think you better put something on, okay?"

  She stopped, dumfounded, as if the thought hadn't occurred and there was no need for it.

  "Oh yeah… sorry, Moe, it's just that I'm used to… you know…",

  "I understand. You go put something on now."

  She turned and sashayed out of the room, swinging a luscious tail section and gorgeous legs. My knees quivered and I had the cold sweats. Soon the fantods would set in.

  "What was that?"

  "Mmmm. One of my charity cases. Lolly's been hooking these past two years. Started when she was sixteen, can you imagine?"

  "Lolly Popp? Lolly Popp, for Chrissake?"

  "Loretta. Then they nicknamed her Lolly. It was her, uh, nom de guerre. It seems to have stuck."

  "Well she certainly is tasty-looking. She part black?"

  "Half Jamaican, which explains the tawny skin and aqua eyes. She looks great now- a beautiful girl. But seven months ago she was a sick kid: hepatitis and V.D. Got her all squared away now. She's en route to a foster home."

  "But I'm not going," said the lovely creature as she glided back into the room. She curled up on the sofa next to Moe and ran her fingers through his thinning hair. Then she pouted and let her head fall against his. She was wearing a big floppy Celtics sweat shirt. It became her. But then, an ox yoke would become her. She could glorify a slag pit. Moe rubbed her back. Then I saw his hand fall down behind her. Almost instantly he withdrew it, clucking his tongue like a scolding mother hen.

  "Loretta. Loretta dear, I said get dressed?

  She rose, still pouting, and began to return to the old trailer portion of Moe's dwelling. As she walked past, the sweat shirt rode up a bit and I saw the cause of Moe's rebuke. It seemed that lovely Loretta had neglected to put on pants. She turned and paused, and a faint smile of apology played about her full lips.

  "Sorry, Moe. I'm just used to… you know…"

  "Of course," said Moe, watching her disappear.

  "Kiljoy," I said.

  "So what's wit' you? You've just moved your bishop like a knight."

  Lolly came back in a flash. In the truest sense, since she was still bottomless. But old Lolly Popp had a sense of humor all right. I have to hand it to her. She scowled at Moe, one hand on hip, and held a pair of black underpants up, as if for inspection, in her other hand. That is, I think they were black. So much light was coming through them it was hard to tell. I wouldn't exactly call them flimsy, but if she held them at shoulder height and dropped them, they'd take five
minutes to reach the floor. "An extremely gratifying choice of undergarments, Lolly," I said. "Bravo."

  She smiled at me-my God, she was gorgeous!-and dutifully held the panties out in a little rectangle and stepped into them, pulling them up. Then I discovered that a girl looks just as sexy squiggling into a pair of slinky panties as she does wriggling out of them. Why is that? And also, though you'd eventually tire of viewing the Taj Mahal by moonlight, or the sunset over Morro Bay, a beautiful woman slipping in or out of her drawers is a sight that never ceases to enthrall. Why is that?

  Lolly Popp smiled at me and then gave an exaggerated blush, realizing that I was watching her pivot back and forth as she drew up the lacy pants. Gee, they were snug. She grinned, turning around.

  "Here's the good part," said Moe intensely.

  "You're not kidding," I answered as I stared at the sumptuous globes of tan flesh that jounced and jiggled as they fought their way into the slinky nyloncasing. Lolly made a final adjustment, then smoothed out the fabric- if one could call it that- with her hands. The pants were nearly transparent except for a tiny if pie-shaped wedge of darker material at the crotch. Perhaps this was for reinforcement, but I know better. Like the seams in nylons, it was designed by some kinky frog in Paris at the turn of the century to make the wearer yet more seductive. Bless him (or her), whoever he was. He should be canonized.

  "Ah, this is terrific!" said Moe. Then I realized that he wasn't referring to his friend; he was engrossed in Dr. Mortimer Adler. He leaned over and turned up the volume. The good doctor said: "… and so by the term goodness, we could be referring to the classic Judeo-Christian concept of purity… or perhaps in a more modern sense the Sartrian view, so well expressed by Gabriel Marcel, of goodness as a behavior template- an active as opposed to passive concept, if you will- which leads to the individuals own responsibility to immerse himself in the upward march of humanity.. ."

  Lolly stared at the tube and sighed. She turned to me.

  "Moe's so smart, isn't he? Isn't he terrific?"

  "Yes he is."

  She sank silently onto the couch between us. Our sides were touching. Above the dark wedge of material on the front of her pants the top of her bush peeked out through the thin material. It looked cute. They tend to.

  "Pay attention, Doc; here's the essence of life," said Moe, leaning forward. "The real essence?

  "I know," I said, staring at Lolly's sport section. My head refused to budge. Hydraulic levers couldn't move it. I heard Mortimer Adler continue: "And so we ask- literally for goodness' sake- what we each can do, every day, to contribute to the general welfare. Now this daily game plan, mundane as it may seem- a sort of Boy Scout ethos, if you will- remains a salutary mode of living. lt is reflected in the New Testament…"

  Lolly sighed again and shifted her bottom. She leaned over, and in a cloud of delicious scent whispered to me.

  "I'm finally able to show Moe how grateful I am. Do you know he's paying for my junior college?"

  "A wonderful guy…" ·

  "I don't have any home now but this; I hope he'll let me stay."

  I was about to offer her alternative residence, but some vague voice in the old gray matter told me it was unwise.

  "Loretta, dear, those pants are inappropriate. Why don't you put your gym shorts on over them, okay?"

  She stalked off toward the bedroom, giving me a last fleeting glimpse. I could've killed Moe.

  "What kind of cockamamy chess game is dis?" He scowled. "Your king gand queen are switched and you just moved your pawn like a rook!"

  I set the chessboard aside. "I can't play chess with her around, Moe."

  "Why not?"

  The cowbell rang. We heard Lolly answer it. A second later she hobbled around the corner, yanking on a pair of faded cotton shorts. They became her. But then- oh, skip it.

  "Doctor Adams?" she inquired, but the visitor had come on in anyway and now stood behind her, gaping. It was Joe. "There's a john here to see you- oops! I mean, a man…"

  "Thanks, Lolly. Hiya, Joe."

  "Doc. I gotta see you."

  "Sure. You remember Moe. Moe, Joe. Joe, Moe."

  "What is dis, the mojo song?" said Moe irritably as he put away the chessboard and pieces. "Joe, want some food? Dried pears? Tofu? Celery? Wheatgerm muffins? Bean sprou-"

  "No thanks," said Joe, his mouth curled in revulsion, "that stuff will kill you. Doc, I have to talk with you privately a minute. Got to. Sorry, Moe."

  I rose to go and looked at Lolly, who winked at me. It was not a teasy wink; it was a good-luck wink. She looked terrific in the shorts. The more clothes she put on, the better she looked, because I knew what she had on underneath the shorts. But I couldn't see those slinky panties. And I knew what was underneath those, but I couldn't see. That would be the ultimate striptease, I thought as I drew on my jacket, to have a girl come on the stage naked and get dressed, piece by piece.

  "Nice meeting you, Lolly," I said as we left through the airplane-style doorway. "You've made my day."

  "You're in enough trouble at home," Joe reminded me, pausing on the doorstep. He was looking at two old photographs that hung side by side on the kitchen wall above the tiny sink. "Who the hell are those guys?"

  "Two of the greatest chess masters who ever lived," said Moe, who was showing us out. "Great but tragic. On the left is the American Paul Morphy, the first true chess genius. On the right is Akiba Rubinstein, a rabbinical student from Lodz. Both of these men had their careers terminated by mental illness. Specifically, it was schizophrenia. Both died in asylums."

  "I might as well get to the point, since you're leading up to it so brilliantly," I said, reaching for a taped oatmeal carton with a slot on top. It was heavy in my hand as I held it out to my brother-in-law. I rattled it under his nose.

  "Give to mental-health research, Joe," I said. When he dropped two quarters in I asked for more. He claimed he had no more change.

  "It'll take folding green, Brindelli. Give!" I said.

  "All I got's tens. I can't give a ten."

  "Ten bucks for leaving," Moe announced, blocking the door. We skinned Joe for a tenner and then he and I left. Joe paused outside the old trailer, still in shock. Through the thin walls of the domicile we could hear Lolly cooing at Moe.

  "Not now dear. Not now; I just have to see this second tape."

  And then came the voice of Mortimer Adler: "- and so to leave Reinhold Niebuhr for the moment and explore the existence of a Supreme Being as expressed by the systems philosopher Alfred North Whitehead-"

  "C'mon, Moe," cooed a sultry voice, husky with desire.

  "Not now, Lolly; I've got to hear the rest of this lecture."

  "- in relation to what he calls absolute entities, which become the building blocks, the molecular and atomic structure, if you will, of his system…"

  "Moo-00e…"

  "Now as you'll recall, Russell and Moore attacked the dilemma differently… and- posing the dilemma, merely asking the question, you see, flips ordinary language analysis and logical positivism into the proverbial cocked hat-"

  "Stop it, Lolly, or I'll send you to your room."

  Joe shook his head sadly.

  "Can you believe it, Doc? Can you believe that dirty old man in there with that young piece?"

  "You are in error. Moe is many things, some of them a little strange. But one thing he is not is dirty. Not in thought, word, deed, or body. And not in soul. Nobody is cleaner than Morris Abramson."

  "Yeah, but that girl, Doc. You should've seen what I saw as I walked in!"

  "That and more. Hey Joe. Cut that out. We're in public view."

  "What? I jus- oh. Sorry," he said, withdrawing his hands from his pockets. He got in his cruiser and followed me home. As I drove through the drizzle I reflected on luscious Lolly and couldn't help but think that Moe's philosophy worked.

  ***

  Forty minutes later Mary slid back the rice-paper screen of the tiny teahouse, kicked off her slippers, and placed a
rough clay pot on the low lacquered table near where Joe and I sat with robes of white raw silk wrapped around us and tied with big sashes. We didn't feel the cold damp. Silk is warmer than wool and as strong as steel, though most people cannot believe this. The pot was filled with boiling hot water which surrounded a bottle of saki. Mary sat down between us.

  "Tell him, Joey."

  Joe poured a tiny cup of the hot wine and sipped it, staring out through the open wall at the gray-brown water of the pond, which rippled infinitely in the light rain.

  "I've been thinking of what the killers have been searching for all along," he said in a tired voice. It was weary- husky with emotional fatigue. "From the start it interested me, of course. Mary can tell you how we were weaned on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. It's funny, but the event seemed to spark the Italian-American community instead of depress it. It was the thing that galvanized and united it. It made us sad, but it made us proud and defiant. So you can see how disastrous it would be if…"

  He paused to let out a slow sigh.

  "… if it were proved that they were guilty."

  Joe let the hot wine roll around on his tongue, swallowed it, then let out another deep breath as he shook his head slowly.

  "I've already talked to Gus Giordano about it. That's where I went right after I left your place earlier. Hotfooted it right down to the North End to talk to Gus. Now what we think is… what we think, is that the thing the hoods are after, whatever it might be, is some kind of proof. Probably a document or photo-something. And what we're really afraid of more than anything is that old Dominic Santuccio had something in his files that he didn't tell Andy about before he died. And that something is pure dynamite. Probably Andy found out about it last week and so asked for the bundle back. I checked with the library; they hadn't opened it yet, just sent it back to Andy via Johnny Robinson. Maybe Andy was ordered to get the envelope back. Who knows?"