After a while, the laughter fell into silence. There were just the sounds of the wind, and Billy’s shoes on the floor, as he walked around taking cans out of cartons and putting them on shelves. Only Ruby was still smiling. Tracy and Ringo seemed sad. They were looking down at their hands. Ringo, who had a very gentle expression, was biting his lip. Billy moved around looking preoccupied and tired. Ruby looked at me and winked, and I smiled at her. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She nodded in the direction of Tracy and Ringo, and said to me, “They looking kind of blue,” and Tracy looked up from his hands and smiled shyly, but Ringo continued to bite his lip and look down.
“Will you look at him?” Ruby said. “Ain’t he cute?”
“Come on, Ruby. I ain’t in the mood,” Ringo said, looking up. His face was still very gentle.
“Is you sad, baby?” she said, going over and putting her hand on his cheek.
“I all right,” Ringo said.
“I just don’t know what I’m gonna do with you,” Ruby said.
Tracy stood up and stretched and yawned, and then sat down again. He was smiling sleepily. “Boy, that laughing take a lot out of me,” he said.
Billy said he guessed it was time he went home, and we all got up and walked slowly toward the door, with Ruby leading the way. Outside, it was foggy and still raining, though it had let up some. Billy came out and locked the door from the outside, and then we all walked up the street. I said I’d go with them a while and get the bus at the stop farther on.
“Well, we certainly glad you is gonna stay with us a while longer,” Ruby said, smiling. She took my arm and Ringo’s arm.
Tracy walked on ahead with Billy. Billy was wearing a neatly fitting raincoat, and as he walked, very erect and relaxed, he seemed much younger than he did in the grocery store. Tracy walked slouching forward. He was slightly pigeon-toed. “Look at Billy,” Ruby said. “He look like a little boy with a big bear.”
“Maybe we is them bears,” Ringo said to me, looking across Ruby, “and, John, you is Goldilocks.” Then he began to laugh very hard by himself.
“Aw, you ain’t funny, Ringo,” Ruby said, squeezing my arm. “You just ain’t funny.”
As we approached my bus stop, Ruby told me to take care of myself. “I hope you remember us,” she said.
She called to Tracy and Billy to come back and say goodbye to me. They turned around and looked surprised, and then they walked back.
“Look, if you ever sick again,” Ringo said, “you come on back and see us.”
“Aw, shut up, Ringo,” Ruby said. “He don’t have to be sick to come back and see us. Right?” She put her arm around my shoulder as I shook hands with Ringo. “He talk like we is some hospital or something,” she said.
“Aw, Ruby, you take everything I say and twist it,” Ringo said. “Look, John, don’t mind nothing I done.”
I told Ringo he hadn’t done anything.
“You lucky he ain’t had more time,” Billy said. “He can do some things.”
I shook hands with Billy and thanked him for everything. Then Tracy stuck out his big hand. “So long, John,” he said. “It been nice knowing you.”
The bus was coming down the street rather slowly, because of the fog. When it pulled in, I picked up my suitcase and said goodbye again.
“Goodbye, honey!” Ruby yelled. “Take it easy.”
Billy gave a serious little wave, and as I stepped into the bus, Ringo yelled, “I hope the bus break down!” and Ruby hit him on the head with her pocketbook. I heard Ringo say that he had said it for luck, and Ruby told him that she had also hit him for luck. I went to the back of the bus and waved to them from the rear window, and the fog closed in and covered them, and I couldn’t see them any more.
CAST A YELLOW SHADOW
BY ROSS THOMAS
Downtown
(Originally published in 1967)
The call came while I was trying to persuade a lameduck Congressman to settle his tab before he burned his American Express card. The tab was $18.35 and the Congressman was drunk and had already made a pyre of the cards he held from Carte Blanche, Standard Oil, and the Diner’s Club. He had used a lot of matches as he sat there at the bar drinking Scotch and burning the cards in an ashtray. “Two votes a precinct,” he said for the dozenth time. “Just two lousy votes a precinct.”
“When they make you an ambassador, you’ll need all the credit you can get,” I said as Karl handed me the phone. The Congressman thought about that for a moment, frowned and shook his head, said something more about two votes a precinct, and set fire to the American Express card. I said hello into the phone.
“McCorkle?” It was a man’s voice.
“Yes.”
“This is Hardman.” It was a soft bass voice with a lot of bulldog gravy and grits in it. Hardman, the way he said it, was two distinct words, an adjective and a noun, and both got equal billing.
“What can I do for you?”
“Make me a reservation for lunch tomorrow? Bout one-fifteen?”
“You don’t need a reservation.”
“Just socializin a little.”
“I’m off the ponies,” I said. “I haven’t made a bet in two days.”
“That’s what they been tellin me. Man, you trying to quit winner?”
“Just trying to quit. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I got me a little business over in Baltimore.” He paused. I waited. I prepared for a long wait. Hardman was from Alabama or Mississippi or Georgia or one of those states where they all talk alike and where it takes a long weekend to get to the point.
“You’ve got business in Baltimore and you want a reservation for one-fifteen tomorrow and you want to know why I haven’t made book with you in two days. What else?”
“Well, we was supposed to pick somethin up off a boat over there in Baltimore and there was a little trouble and this white boy got hurt. So Mush—you know Mush?”
I told him I knew Mush.
“So Mush was bout to get hisself hurt by a couple of mothers when this white boy steps in and sort of helps Mush out—know what I mean?”
“Perfectly.”
“Say wha?”
“Go on.”
“Well, one of these cats had a blade and he cuts the white boy a little, but not fore he’d stepped in and helped out for Mush—know what I mean?”
“Why call me?”
“Well, Mush brings the white boy back to Washington cause he’s hit his head and bleedin and passed out and all.”
“And you need some blood tonight?”
Hardman chuckled and it seemed to rumble over the phone. “Shit, baby, you somethin!”
“Why me?”
“Well, this boy got nothin on him. No money—”
“Mush checked that out, I’d say.”
“No gold, no ID, no billfold, nothin. Just a little old scrap of paper with your address on it.”
“Has he got a description, or do all white folks look alike?”
“Bout five-eleven,” Hardman said, “maybe even six feet. Maybe. Short hair, little grey in it. Dark for an ofay. Looks like he been out in the sun a whole lot. Bout your age, only skinnier, but then, hell, who ain’t?”
I tried to make nothing out of my voice; no tone, no interest. “Where do you have him?”
“Where I’m at, pad over on Fairmont.” He gave me the address. “Figure you know him? He’s out cold.”
“I might,” I said. “I’ll be over. You get a doctor?”
“Done come and gone.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can catch a cab.”
“You won’t forget about that reservation?”
“It’s taken care of.” I hung up.
Karl, the bartender I had imported from Germany, was deep in conversation with the Congressman. I signaled him to come down to the other end of the bar.
“Take care of the Right Honorable,” I said. “Call him a cab—the company that specializes in drunks. If he doesn’t hav
e any money, have him sign a tab and we’ll send him a bill.”
“He’s got a committee hearing tomorrow at nine in the Rayburn Building,” Karl said. “It’s on reforestation. It’s about the redwoods. I was planning on going anyhow so I’ll pick him up in the morning and make sure he gets there.”
Some people hang around police stations. Karl hung around Congress. He had been in the States for less than a year but he could recite the names of the one hundred Senators and the four hundred and thirty-five Representatives in alphabetical order. He knew how they voted on every roll call. He knew when and where committees met and whether their sessions were open or closed. He could tell you the status of any major piece of legislation in either the Senate or the House and make you a ninety to ninety-five per cent accurate prediction on its chance for passage. He read the Congressional Record faithfully and snickered while he did it. He had worked for me before in a saloon I had once owned in Bonn, but the Bundestag had never amused him. He found Congress one long laugh.
“Just so he gets home,” I said, “although he looks as if he’ll fade before closing.” The Congressman was drooping a bit over his glass.
Karl gave him a judicious glance. “He’s good for two more and then I’ll get him some coffee. He’ll make it.”
I told him to close up, nodded good night to a handful of regular customers and a couple of waiters, walked east to Connecticut Avenue and turned right towards the Mayflower Hotel. There was one cab at the hotel stand and I climbed into its back seat and gave the driver the address. He turned to look at me.
“I don’t ever go over there after midnight,” he said.
“Don’t tell me. Tell the hack inspector.”
“My life’s worth more’n eighty cents.”
“We’ll make it an even dollar.”
I got a lecture on why George Wallace should be President on the way to the Fairmont Street address. It was an apartment building, fairly new, flanked by forty- or fifty-year-old row houses. I paid the driver and told him he needn’t wait. He snorted, quickly locked all the doors, and sped off. Inside I found the apartment number and rang the bell. I could hear chimes inside. Hardman answered the door.
“Come in this house,” he said.
I went in. A voice from somewhere, a woman’s voice, yelled: “You tell him to take off his shoes, hear?”
I looked down. I was standing on a deep pile carpet that was pure white.
“She don’t want her white rug messed up,” Hardman said and indicated his own shoeless feet. I knelt down and took off my shoes. When I rose Hardman handed me a drink.
“Scotch-and-water O.K.?”
“Fine.” I looked around the livingroom. It was L-shaped and had an orange couch and some teak and leather chairs, a dining table, also of teak, and a lot of brightly colored pillows that were carefully scattered here and there to make it all look casual. There were some loud prints on the wall. A lot of thought seemed to have gone into the room, and the total effect came off fairly well and just escaped being flashy.
A tall brown girl in red slacks swayed into the room shaking down a thermometer. “You know Betty?” Hardman asked.
I said no. “Hello, Betty.”
“You’re McCorkle.” I nodded “That man’s sick,” she said, “and there ain’t no use trying to talk to him now. He’s out for another hour. That’s what Doctor Lambert say. And he also say he can be moved all right when he wakes up. So if he’s a friend of yours, would you kindly move him when he does wake up? He’s got my bed and I don’t plan sleeping on no couch. That’s where Hard’s going to sleep.”
“Now, honey—”
“Don’t honey me, you no good son-of-a-bitch.” She didn’t raise her voice when she said it. She didn’t have to. “You bring in some cut-up drunk and dump him into my bed. Whyn’t you take him to the hospital? Or to your house, ’cept that fancy wife of yours wouldn’t have stood for it.” Betty turned to me, and waved a hand at Hardman. “Look at him. Six-feet, four-inches tall, dresses just so fine, goes around pronouncing his name ‘Hard-Man,’ and then lets some little five-foot-tall tight twat lead him around by the nose. Get me a drink.” Betty collapsed on the couch and Hardman hastily mixed her a drink.
“How about the man in your bed, Betty?” I said. “May I see him?”
She shrugged and waved her hand at a door. “Right through there. He’s still out cold.”
I nodded and set the glass down on a table that had a coaster on it. I went through the door and looked at the man in the bed. It was a big, fancy bed, oval in shape, and it made the man look smaller than he was. I hadn’t seen him in more than a year and there were some new lines in his face and more grey in his hair than I remembered. His name was Michael Padillo and he spoke six or seven languages without accent, was handy with either a gun or a knife, and could make what has been called the best whiskey sour in Europe.
His other chief distinction was that a lot of people thought he was dead. A lot more hoped that he was.
* * *
The last time I had seen Michael Padillo he had been falling off a barge into the Rhine. There had been a fight with guns and fists and a broken bottle. Padillo and a Chinese called Jimmy Ku had gone over the side. Somebody had been aiming a shotgun at me at the time and the shotgun had gone off, so I was never sure whether Padillo had drowned or not until I received a postcard from him. It had been mailed from Dahomey in West Africa, contained a one-word message—“Well”—and had been signed with a “P.” He had never been much of one to write.
On dull days after the postcard came I sometimes sat around and drank too much and speculated about how Padillo had made it from the Rhine to the West Coast of Africa and whether he liked the climate. He was good at getting from one place to another. When he was not helping to run the saloon that we owned in Bonn he had been on call to one of those spooky government agencies that kept sending him to such places as Lodz and Leipzig and Tollin. I never asked what he did; he never told me.
When his agency decided to trade him for a couple of defectors to the East, Padillo tried to buy up his contract. He succeeded that spring night when he fell off the barge into the Rhine about a half-mile up river from the American Embassy. His agency wrote him off and no one from the Embassy ever came around to inquire about what happened to the nice man who used to own half of Mac’s Place in Bad Godesberg.
Padillo’s attempt to retire from the secret-agent dodge had involved both of us in a trip to East Berlin and back. During our absence somebody had blown up the saloon in revenge for some real or imagined slight so I collected the insurance money, got married, and opened Mac’s Place in Washington a few blocks up from K Street, west of Connecticut Avenue. It’s dark and it’s quiet and the prices discourage the annual pilgrimages of high school graduating classes.
I stood there in the bedroom and looked at Padillo for a while. I couldn’t see where he had been cut. The covers were up to his neck. He lay perfectly still in the bed, breathing through his nose. I turned and went back into the livingroom with the white carpet.
“How bad is he hurt?” I asked Hardman.
“Got him in the ribs and he bled some. Mush say that boy damn near got both those cats. Moved nice and easy and quick, just like he’d been doin it all his life.”
“He’s no virgin,” I said.
“Friend of yours?”
“My partner.”
“What you gonna do with him?” Betty said.
“He’s got a small suite in the Mayflower; I’ll move him there when he wakes up and get somebody to stay with him.”
“Mush’ll stay,” Hardman said. “Mush owes him a little.”
“Doctor Lambert say he wasn’t hurt bad, but that he’s all tired out—exhaustion,” Betty said. She looked at her watch. It had a lot of diamonds on it. “He’ll be waking up in bout half an hour.”
“I take it Doctor Lambert didn’t call the cops,” I said.
Hardman sniffed. “Now what kind of fool question is th
at?”
I should have known. “May I use your phone?”
Betty pointed it out. I dialed a number and it rang for a long time. Nobody answered. The phone was the push-button kind so I tried again on the chance that I had misdialed or mispunched. I was calling my wife and I was having a husband’s normal reactions when his wife fails to answer the telephone at one-forty-five in the morning. I let it ring nine times and then hung up.
My wife was a correspondent for a Frankfurt paper, the one with the thoughtful editorials. It was her second assignment in the States. I had met her in Bonn and she knew about Padillo and the odd jobs he had once done for the quietly inefficient rival of the CIA. My wife’s name was Fredl and before she married me it was Fraulein Doktor Fredl Arndt. The Doktor had been earned in Political Science at the University of Bonn and some of her tony friends addressed me as Herr Doktor McCorkle, which I bore well enough. After a little more than a year of marriage I found myself very much in love with my wife. I even liked her.
I called the saloon and got Karl. “Has my wife called?”
“Not tonight.”
“The Congressman still there?”
“He’s closing up the place with coffee and brandy. The tab is now $24.85 and he’s still looking for two votes a precinct. If he had had them, he could have made the runoff.”
“Maybe you can help him look. If my wife calls, tell her I’ll be home shortly.”
“Where’re you at?”
“Right before the at,” I said. Karl had no German accent, but he had learned his English from the endless procession of Pfc’s who came out of the huge Frankfurt PX during the postwar years. As a seven-year-old orphan, he had bought their cigarettes to sell on the black market.
“Never end a sentence with a preposition,” he recited.
“Not never; just seldom. I’m at a friend’s. I have to run an errand so if Fredl calls, tell her I’ll be home shortly.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Right.”
Hardman raised his six feet, four inches of large bone and hard muscle from a chair, skirted around Betty as if she would bite, and walked over to mix another drink. He was as close to a racketeer as Washington had to offer. I suppose. He was far up in the Negro numbers hierarchy, ran a thriving bookie operation, and had a crew of boosters out lifting whatever they fancied from the city’s better department stores and specialty shops. He wore three- or four-hundred-dollar suits and eighty-five-dollar shoes and drove around town in a bronze Cadillac convertible talking to friends and acquaintances over his radio-telephone. He was a folk hero to the Negro youth in Washington and the police let him alone most of the time because he wasn’t too greedy and paid his dues where it counted.
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