Harry W. A. Davis, Jr

A Story by RALPH MALONEY

ON THE coffee table in my Aunt May’s apartment is an ashtray decorated with the Maloney family coat of arms. May and I used to joke about it, but she’s getting on now and Lately fails to sec all that humor in her ancestry. I know there is no aristocracy in my background, because every time I need a haircut, people tell me I need a haircut, and when I have to borrow money, even old friends reach very slowly for their pockets.

Harry W. A. Davis, jr., uses a cuticle scissors to trim his hair when the clump of it spills over his collar. He needs a haircut badly, always, yet nobody seems to notice. He carries it off. Harry W. A. has a blade of a nose and a face all hollows and angles that permit him to look natural in foulard ascots and carefree hair. That is good blood. Motivated of course by jealousy and possibly by spite, I call him Prince Val and ask for Aleta and Arn whenever I see him. It doesn’t bother Harry W. A. at all. He taps vainly at the club of hair behind him and explains that Aarvak, his red stallion, is tethered to a parking meter and can he borrow a dime. That’s another thing about Harry. He expects everybody to loan him money, and everybody does. Good blood.

Harry arrived at my beach place last spring in a gray racing Ferrari worth four thousand haircuts to a heavy tipper. He stepped cleanly over the small door and paused to admire the car. “Now what have you done,” I said by way of greeting.

“It’s Jim Larkin’s. He loaned it to me. Come on, we’re going to the races.”

“Aqueduct,” I declined.

“Bridgehampton,” Harry said impatiently. “The automobile races. They have two good race weekends a year, and this is one of them. You can use the sun. You’re albino.”

“Come in and have a drink.”

Harry knew a shortcut to the Bridgehampton Raceway, so we got lost. The history of aristocracy is one of inefficiency and waste. To make up time, he did a hundred and forty on the straightaways, thereby missing all possible turns to the track. In profound fright and some frustration, I called him several names, and at length lie slowed down enough to follow the arrows to the raceway.

The parking areas at Bridgehampton Raceway are modified sandpits located, I judged from the howl of cars in the distance, any number of miles from the racecourse. I saw before me an exhausting hike over dunes to watch automobiles go fast, and I wasn’t pleased in the least. But at each parking lot the attendant waved us on, until we reached a small paved lot overlooking the start and finish line of the track. As Harry backed and turned to park the car, I remarked that we were lucky all those lots back there had been full. “They weren’t full,” Harry said. “They had plenty of room. The Ferrari got us here.”

“They let us through because of the car?” I said.

“They sure did.” Harry cocked his head and looked fondly at the dashboard. I looked too, but I didn’t see what Harry saw.

Below us a cluster of sports cars went by very tight together and at idiotic speed, giving me quite a scare. Harry vaulted from the Ferrari and ran to the chain fence enclosing the track. I opened my door like a citizen and got out slowly and looked around. It was my first visit to an automobile racetrack, and I wanted to see how things were. Things were not bad at all. Behind and above the paved lot we had found was a terrace full of rich kids with drinks in their hands. When the racing cars were out of sight, Harry walked back from the fence and I pointed this out to him. He thought it was very funny. He had been coming to Bridgehampton for years and hadn’t known there was a bar; I had been at the track for exactly eight minutes and had found a beauty. I’m sure there is humor in that because I laughed, too, at the time. But Harry told the story many times that afternoon, and some of the joy is lost on me now. We climbed a short hill to the tall wood fence that protected the terrace on three sides. There was a two-dollar entrance fee, and when I reached, out of long habit, to pay, Harry produced more money than he had any right to and insisted on paying. My instinct had discovered the bar, he explained, and it was only fair that he pay our way in.

On the terrace, at a long, narrow table facing the track, was a group of good-looking young people with stopwatches and drinks before them. They greeted Harry with a vague camaraderie, as though they had not known him long and were sorry they hadn’t. Everybody looked rich, but then so did Harry, who had owed me fifty bucks since the beginning of time. We were invited to sit and introduced to some stunning girls. Harry bought me drinks with all that money he suddenly had, and a fellow named Freddy identified the cars and drivers for me and generally made things interesting. Sitting in the sun, with free drinks before me and in the company of all those toothsome children, I decided that if this was what auto racing was all about, I would be back.

THE last race of the day was one of the three or lour really good races they have at Bridgehampton all season, or so Freddy told me. Just before the start, with the curious low cars blatting and zapping before us, Harry came over to stand between my chair and the chair of a perfectly exquisite lollipop I had been wondering how best to accomplish. For my information and the lollipop’s benefit, Harry said the lead Lotus-Ford was being driven by a friend of his, Jack Feldt, and that after the race we would all go down to the pits and say hello. Harry bent to the girl and added, “You’re Polly, aren’t you? Would you like to come with us, Polly?”

“I’11 have to talk to Peter,” Polly replied, interested .

“I’ll talk to Peter, honey,” I said. “We’ll all go down. You’ll like it. The drivers are handsome and brave, the cars are swift and shiny, and there is unbelievable free hooch.” Of course I don’t always talk like that. I talked that way to jolly her, to reassure her, and for some reason I scared her to death. Her eyes got big, and she looked to Harry for help. Rejection is one thing, but this was preposterous. I gave my chair to Harry and went over to the bar. Let him try to accomplish that nut, I decided, bandaging my vanity.

In the shelter of a small stucco building that housed the bar, out of the wind, I discovered the sun was strong enough to lie dangerous, although it was just Memorial Day. The skin at my temples and cheekbones felt thin and tight with sunburn. It was still early enough in the year to be ingroup and tanned, so I commandeered a barstool and dozed in the lee of the building with my face stuck into the four-thirty sun. I opened my eyes only when I heard the cars roar past or when a waiter gave me a drink from Harry. I didn’t much want the drinks and certainly didn’t need them, but God alone knew when Harry W. A. Davis, jr., would have money again, so I drank up. When the last tap of the race was announced, I shook myself awake and went down to join the railbirds for the finish. Harry’s friend Jack Feldt came in third overall and first in class, which apparently was marvelous. Cars slowed and pulled into the infield across from us. Dirty drivers climbed wearily out and shook hands all around and were embraced by pretty girls in skintight pants. I liked that part better than the racing and watched until that Polly girl I had so frightened turned up at my side. “Harry says hurry up,” she said. “He’s gone to get his Ferrari. We’re going to the pits.” I had all kinds of questions — whose Ferrari? whatever have you done with Peter? what are the pits, anyway? — but I didn’t want to frighten her again. Besides, her voice had a definite authority to it, she was bossing me, so when she told me to hurry up, I hurried up.

There are advantages to owning, or seeming to own, a Ferrari. The assumption is made that you are wealthy, which is the biggest advantage a man can have. Nowhere in the world are these advantages more evident than in the infield of an automobile racecourse. People assume not only that you are rich but that you know your cars, you know what you’re doing; and they imply in conversation that you might have made all that money yourself. Because we arrived in a Ferrari, Harry and I and the girl, Polly, were accepted at once by the drivers and crew people. They assumed we were insiders they had somehow missed at Sebring or Lime Rock or the other big American tracks. I thank the Ferrari for that. I have never in my life been accepted as part of the family by a nicer group.

WE VISITED several of the racing entourages in the pits. I know better than to drink gin in the sun, yet I had done just that, all afternoon. Nonetheless and bravely, I accepted a little something from every bottle at every pit, and about sundown I joined a party in a vast aluminum trailer that had the name of a vermouth on the side. The trailer was jammed and noisy and stuffy. While there was still light enough to get around without groping, I stepped outside for air. I stopped by a red Ferrari whose fenders had been removed for racing. This Ferrari had a roll bar over the cockpit; ours did not. I made a mental note: get roll bar for Ferrari; fire Zanuck. Two young men of the sweater-and-RPM set, with fingernails bitten to the quick yet miraculously full of grime anyway, were discussing the car reverently. On the hood of the car was a transparent plastic scoop. All Ferraris, it seems to me, have a scoop on the hood, but this one was transparent. Through the plastic I could see three carburetors in line. I nudged one of the young men and pointed confidentially at the hood. “Those are carburetors,” I announced in a thoroughly patronizing manner, and the boys fell back speechless. I started laughing very hard at this, and when one of them hid his miraculously grimy fingernails in his palm to make a fist, I walked off fast, still laughing.

I mention all this because it amuses me and to indicate the kind of night it was becoming. We had drinks in the trailer, drinks in the cars. Polly blossomed after Harry decided to take a nap, and we became friends. “Why were you so afraid of me?” I asked when we were sitting in the dark in a Land Rover I had admired. “Because you looked so tough,” she said. I didn’t know what to say. I said, “I don’t look tough.” I don’t.

“Well, it wasn’t that, exactly,” she said. “When we were first introduced, Harry and I, Harry pointed to you and said you were his mechanic, and when you talked that way —”

“His mechanic!” After one muddy surge of anger — it wasn’t enough for Harry to claim the Ferrari, he had to claim me, too — I managed to laugh a little. “Is that why you ordered me to hurry up?”

“I suppose so.” She felt un-American.

We got out of the Land Rover — which I much preferred to the Ferrari, by the way — and walked to the vermouth trailer in the dark, leaning all over one another. In the trailer there remained only Jack Feldt and another driver and two girls with long hair and tight pants. Harry W. A. Davis was there, too, but he was in a bunk, not responding. In an excess of euphoria or idiocy, I invited everybody to dinner. (We’ll see who’s a mechanic around here.) The invitation was accepted with stunning alacrity, and we all kicked Harry awake and went out to the cars.

Harry insisted on driving, and I had to let him. I didn’t know which of the knobs and switches did what. We drove from the track to Mike Roth’s saloon in Southampton, where I might reasonably expect to hang the tab if the party were too expensive. There was a lot of roaring and gearing in the small caravan of cars behind us, and I learned that racing drivers do not drive carefully on public roads, they drive like hell. I had thought they drove slowly away from the track, just as, some years ago, I somewhere got the notion that bartenders don’t drink on the job. At Roth’s, I arranged for two tables to be pushed together in the back room, and availed myself of Mike Roth’s ear. Racing drivers were good business and good for business, I explained, so that he would tear up the tab. Mike listened, nodding, then pointed out that the next time these drivers would be around would be in late September, but it was all right for me to cash a check. With that victory behind him, he added, “There’s a couple of men at the front bar asking for you. Cops, I’d say.” I looked over his shoulder to the front bar. Cops.

Drunk and holding myself in and together the way an old uniform will hold you, I went up to the cops and introduced myself and bought them a drink. (“Seven and Seven,” the young cop said. “Scotch and water, no ice,” said the older cop.) “Nice place,” the older one said. “You one of the owners?”

They always start that way. “No,” I said, “I’m just a customer here. Your business isn’t with me, it’s with Mike Roth.” I wasn’t very polite at all.

“Oh, that’s not what we’re here for,” the older cop said, laughing easily, taking no offense. He had been around long time. “Jimmy here and myself are on special detail from Nassau County. Car theft.”

I could feel my face going all to pieces under the old cop’s gaze. How, I wondered, had that girl ever thought I was a tough? The young cop had so far not uttered a word, but he looked at me now, hard, over the old cop’s shoulder. “What kind of car did you have in mind?” I asked hopefully.

“A Ferrari,” he said, and all hope dissolved. There was a long pause while the man looked idly around at the pretty girls in tight pants, their young men deeply tanned although it wasn’t even the first of June. The scene brought money to mind. “What do you imagine one of them things cost?” he asked.

“Twelve, thirteen thousand dollars, new,” I said, my first fright subsiding. “Secondhand, maybe seven thousand. It depends.”

“Well, there’s one of them missin’. The owner loaned it to a friend and can’t get it back. Fellow by the name of Larkin. You know him? No matter. He knows you. He said we might find his friend and his car out here and that you were the man to see.”

“As a matter of fact — would you like another drink? Actually, I’ve been the guest of Larkin’s Ferrari all afternoon, you might say. . .” My poise suddenly collapsed altogether; it had occurred to me that all that money Harry W. A. had was from the sale of Larkin’s stolen Ferrari. “It was the first time I had ever been to the races and the Ferrari got us—”

“Is it outside now?” the old cop asked mildly. He was gentling me because that old uniform that had been holding me together had somehow come loose at the seams.

“It’s in the parking lot.”

“Why don’t you go get Larkin’s friend and bring him here, and we’ll see if we can’t get things straightened out.” He seemed now a very nice wise old Irish cop, and I felt thoroughly ashamed that I had suspected him of a shakedown at the start. I went to the back room and lifted Harry to his feet by his upper arm. He was tip-over drunk and standing terribly tall. “Did you sell Larkin’s car? Is that where the money came from?” I asked.

In fright, I guess —it certainly wasn’t anger — my voice took on a hissing urgency that seemed to amuse Harry. He looked down at me along his blade of a nose. “I took a down payment on it,” he allowed.

“Who gave you the money?”

“Jack Feldt.”

“Will he prosecute?”

“Not a chance. We went to Choate together. He’ll be mad, but he wouldn’t call the police.” Harry seemed surprised I could ask such a question.

I squeezed Harry’s thin bicep hard as I could because his attention span had been exhausted, and he was looking around for another drink. “Listen,” I said, “the police are here. Larkin wants his car back. He hasn’t signed a complaint or they would simply have arrested us. Come along and be nice and promise to get the car back tomorrow. Understand?’ ‘

The police watched us cross the dance floor to the bar, the old cop looking Harry up and down, up and down. Harry stood so tall that if he fell he must of necessity have fallen on his back. With his foulard ascot and his Prince Val mane, Harry looked thoroughly aristocratic and quite rich. Indeed, the staggering load lie had aboard bespoke money of itself. The old cop sipped his drink and put the glass down as I introduced Harry. He did not offer to shake Harry’s hand. A change was taking place in his face, the kind of change that would scare me to death if I had kept somebody’s car a little too long. It didn’t bother Harry. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?” he asked.

“You have a 1963 gray racing Ferrari belonging to a man named James Larkin?”

“Yes. Mr. Larkin loaned it to me.”

“He also asked you to give it back to him, didn’t he?” The cop’s eyes had gone mean and a little wild. I gave Harry a warning glance, hoping he had seen the change in the cop’s face, but Harry wasn’t seeing much of anything.

“I intend to return Mr. Larkin’s car as soon as possible,” Harry said, airy as hell.

“You’ll have it back tomorrow morning or I’ll book you right now for public intoxication. Is that clear!” His voice was thickening dangerously. “Your friend Larkin won’t sign a complaint against you, but that don’t mean you’re not a t’ief.” The cop’s face had filled with blood. He was so abruptly filled with rage that lie gurgled saying “Larkin” and had lapsed into brogue. Harry tottered backward, and the young cop got up and stood between the two of them. “What the hell are you staring at!” the old man demanded of me.

“Nothing,” I said. What I had been staring at was the strangled transformation in his face. With its raw symmetry and lunatic coloration, by its lurid hurled-out challenge to the world, his face resembled — did not look like, exactly, but more than reminded me of — the Maloney coat of arms on Aunt May’s ashtray.

“As for you,” he said to Harry, “I should run you in for the hell of it.” The cop quivered so with fury that I knew it could not be present distaste or current anger that affected him so; it had to be something historical or racial. When I had decided that, there wasn’t far to look. What the old cop saw in Harry’s high-bridged nose and tall carriage was Stuart treachery and Cromwellian cruelty and the wild geese fleeing and the Black and Tans and his grandmother and mother working in Miss Ann’s kitchen. The cop’s yellow eyes saw all over Harry’s face No Irish Need Apply.

“Now just a minute here goddamnit!” Harry began. He had no idea what was going on, and there was no reason he should have known what was going on. The old cop tried to get at Harry, but the young cop held him. “Go back to your table. Go finish your dinner. Get the hell out of here,” the young cop said to Harry in a sensible voice. Harry left slowly, turning several times to look, the way men leave a fight they can’t afford but might win. “Get ahold of yourself, Jim,” the young cop said.

The old man relaxed so suddenly and utterly it was more a collapse. He emptied his drink, put the glass on the bar, and stood up slowly. “What the hell are you in all this, anyway?” he asked me. All anger and brogue had left his speech.

“I’m his mechanic,” I said, pointing a thumb at the back room.

And that made everything all right. His face relaxed, and I could no longer imagine how I had once seen that coat of arms flaring at me. We were together now, the employed, the used, the exploited. “I want that car back to Larkin by noon tomorrow, is that clear?”

“I could get it back tonight but I have a — ”

“Noon tomorrow will do. Have Larkin call me.” He gave me a card, which I reverently put in my shirt pocket to indicate some kind of priority. “And tell your friend keep stealin’ Ferraris.” His face flared again briefly. “He steals a Ford and I’ll put his ay-ristocratic arse in jail, fairy necktie and all.” I nodded humbly, wanting to get it all over with. “Tell him he runs out of Ferraris, start stealin’ Garson-Kanins, whatever they call them.”

“Karmann-Ghias?” I suggested.

“They’ll do. No matter. Just tell him keep his thievin’ hands off Fords, or I’ll take his belt and shoelaces away for a long time. Thank you for the drinks. Good night.” He marched directly to the door and out, exactly like a man looking for some time and a place to recapture himself. His partner turned and waved at me from the door, his face saying unmistakably Nothing.