Brain Guy: A gang killer meets his match in a TNT blonde by Benjamin Appel

corpses of cows and pigs slaughtered in Chicago. After breakfast he rode uptown to Forty-second, standing outside on the toy platform between the El cars. Everytime the El stopped, the conductor squeezed into zero, opening the gates, hollering in a voice of whisky and cold weather. But the El never traveled to the far-away places, or he didn’t at any rate, always getting off at the same station, sometimes thinking of the rails penetrating to Columbus Circle, the Eighties, the Bronx. He’d go to the Bronx with Cathy one of these days, to the end of the line. The Bronx must be some place. Running downstairs, he’d report for work.
    Metz started the same way. At seven sharp, little Napoleon would pop in, take off his felt, get into white apron and straw hat, the special livery he kept in the rear, glaring at the three clerks like a general at his army, preoccupied, figuring profits. “O.K.,” he commanded. They’d fill a bucket of water and clean the window, the water trickling on their hands. Ninth Avenue was beyond life, a plateau of beautiful loneliness. Nothing could be as lonely as a city when the sun shines and nobody is stirring. The oyster-wagons, the fruit peddlers, had not showed up yet. Washing the window was working in a city everyone had left. After this they swept out the store, Metz dropping the fresh sawdust with his own hands as if it were manna from the skies. Then spick and span in their white aprons, the clerks and their boss waited for business. Soon the first Polish woman came in for milk and rolls. They cut butter, sold eggs, passing down this and that, wrapping up, smiling at the Irish, Greek, Italian housewives.
    The Irish were never tired of ribbing the boss, asking questions about that good-looker. Oh, he was a dandy. Joe’d grin; the two Jewish clerks’d grin; Metz smiling in his strange bashful way, pleased the customers were pleased. The morning went up like a house afire, the three of them slicing the salt butter, weighing the cheeses, making dough for Metz. Every now and then, Joe’d be picked to go downtown with Metz in a dark rattling truck. There in the market, in the outside vigor of air and sun and the things of the earth eaten by men, Metz’d purchase tubs of butter, boxes of cheese from the wholesalers. Joe would help other workers load up the truck. In the beginning his muscles ached, but among those Slavs and squareheads, sinewed, uncomplaining, the doing men of the earth, he soon rejoiced in the heroic betrayal of youth, using his body wantonly. It was impossible for him to tire. They’d drive back, and Joe and one of the clerks’d unload. They called him Der Starker because he was taller than they, and his chest and shoulders were more spectacular, but he noticed they worked as well as himself, the thin Jews.
    The afternoon was another morning except that the things sold weren’t as barnyard simple as eggs and milk and butter. Under the steady control of Metz, the clerks, who appeared to be attached by countless wires to the canned goods crowding the shelves, moved like puppets serving the customers. Around noon when things slackened, they’d snatch a roll, cut off a hunk of butter and cheese, drink a bottle of milk, and then work arduously all the day. Metz didn’t permit smoking in the store. At intervals they’d rush out into the yard, choking on furious puffs, returning all smiles as if they’d never left.
    It was always a surprise to Joe when Metz, dark and gnomish, never changing in appearance, never showing fatigue or the progress of time, would shout to him: “Hey, Joey, you’n Sam can go home. Tomorrow you’ll stay a little later.” He’d scramble for the rear stockroom where the shelves were a thousand shining tins, the cases and boxes piled against the walls. He’d houdini out of his apron, hurrying onto the street. On the alternate days when he stayed later it’d be almost nine; he’d be happy and a little sad for the livelong day that had vanished