by Tom Powers
We passed under a light and I looked down and there was those two big eyes, looking up at me from his head in my lap.
“Listen,” says Jeff. “If there’s going to be bloodhounds after you we’d better get rid of the little fella before they get to sniffin’ us.”
“Hush, Jeff,” I says. “He’s woke up.” But I wasn’t more than half right, the little gentleman wasn’t there yet, not all the way.
He just kept looking up at me and his hand came slowly up to his chest—the hand with the ring on it. I could see the lights as we passed ’em, shining on it. It wasn’t exactly red, see? Murkylike, it was.
Well, his hand come up and began to pat around on his chest like it was looking for something—something he had thought was sure there and he just wanted to touch it to make sure.
Then I could feel the back of his shoulders tense up against my leg and he begun to feel around inside his shirt and around his neck and he sat up quick. “Listen,” I says, “you’re hurt,” I says, “but you’re all right. This is Jeff’s cab,” I says, “and I got money to pay for it. Besides, he’s a friend of mine, so even if I didn’t, he’d let me pay him later.”
But he wasn’t listening.
“Oh,” he says, not quick or scared like you’d see a dog run over, but slow like you come home from high school late and you got to where your house had been when you had left your ma and your mop and your aunt Helga there, with her little dog to visit ’em, and now you got back from high school and it was burnt down flat to the ground.
Jeff pulled up under a light and looked back through the window.
“Is he hurt bad?” he says. “I know a doc,” he says, “but he’s on the South Side. He’s a good egg, and if he dies, he won’t let on we brought him.”
Jeff talks in a way that seems kinda funny up here, but it’s the way they talk in Texas.
The little man looked at him and, “Gone,” he says.
Well, we didn’t know then what he was talking about. It wasn’t his little flower button, the lotus, for there it was, still in his buttonhole.
“Gone,” he said to Jeff and then to me. “Gone.”
“He’s nuts,” Jeff says. “Let’s get rid of him.”
“But, Jeff,” I says, “he’s lost something. Look at his face.”
“Please,” the gentleman said, “something, please, is gone. We must go back.”
“Go back where?” I says.
“That place, café,” he says. “Please go back, quick.”
“Listen, son,” Jeff says. “If you want to get yourself took apart first and pinched next, just go back there to that café.”
“Please,” says the gentleman.
“Nuts,” says Jeff. He slowed down. “Listen,” he says, “ask him where he wants to go and you git out, and I’ll take him there.”
“In this dress?” I says. “And nothing else? I won’t. You just keep going and I’ll try to make him understand.”
“Let me,” says Jeff, “I speak a little Spanish. Maybe he’ll understand that.” And he spoke it to him quite a lot—fast and loud—but the little gentleman couldn’t seem to understand Spanish.
“Let me, Jeff,” I says. “Listen, Mister,” I says, as calm as Aunt Helga when Spot was at the attic window and our house was burning down, and she was trying to get him to stay there till Pop could climb up the outside and get him. So she spoke, calm, to Spot, and so Pop saved him and I often thought that was one reason Aunt Helga asked us to come and live at her house after that.
“Listen, Mister,” I says, quiet, “you don’t need to worry. You’re all right. And if you lost something in that fight with that bunch of hoodlums, just stop feeling around your neck,” I says, “and feel on the sides of your head, and thank Jeff here you got both of your ears on where the Lord put ’em on.”
But he wasn’t listening.
“Drake,” he says, “please, Drake Hotel.”
“That’s swell,” says Jeff and stepped on the gas so that me and the gentleman grabbed onto each other and fell back.
“Excuse it, please,” he says and let go quick.
It’s funny how a thing like that will tell a girl things. I can’t explain, but the men I’ve been in taxis with—gosh. So I know a gentleman when one lets go of me like that, after a taxi has started sudden.
“We’ll drop him at the Drake,” Jeff says, “and turn him loose and let them take care of him.”
“That’s it,” I says, but I wasn’t going to.
Well, we turned off of Michigan and shot around the block and came up to the big glass canopy from the lake side and stopped.
The doorman opened the door and the little gentleman got out into the bright light. As he turned back and put his hand out, I saw for the first time the blood on his shirt front. Just a round spot, as big as a compact, but getting bigger.
I took his hand and he helped me out.
“Hey,” Jeff said, “hey.” But the little man helped me across the sidewalk where the wind from the lake made me feel like I had stepped into the big icebox Aunt Helga’s husband, Uncle Ulrich, used to have in his butcher shop. He took me into it once and I jumped up and down, squealing, and Uncle Ulrich hugged me tight to get me warm, he said. And he kept saying some German into my hair till I stuck him with a safety pin that was holding my stocking up. But I never told because Pop would have killed Uncle Ulrich and been hanged. And besides, what difference did it make? But Aunt Helga knew. She never said so but she knew all right.
Well, that’s how that wind felt when it hit me. And there was Jeff saying “hey” and the doorman saying, “What’s the matter, bud?” And Jeff not wanting to let on.
The gentleman took a bill out and handed it to Jeff and it was a hundred dollar bill and that was a shock, I can tell you. And he took my arm and before I knew it we were inside the door going up the steps to the lobby.
As we went in the door I got a glimpse of a big black car driving up behind Jeff’s taxi, and a lot of men jumping out. I remember I thought, “Good Lord, maybe it’s those toughies from the café that have followed us.” But a glance over my shoulder showed it wasn’t them. Taller, a lot taller, they was and all with black overcoats and black hats. Anyhow, in we went.
It seemed there was a big party of some kind going on, and I was wondering how I could get him to a doctor when the swing door we had just come through swung, like crazy, and through it came the four tall men that had gotten out of the black car. And for the first time, I saw that they had the same coloring as the Indian gentleman. And somehow I knew it was us they was after. And I thought, “This time, there’ll surely be no holding the butterflies.” But there was.
The people in the lobby looked at us, as you can imagine. The four tall men come up to us and surrounded us, just like those quiet gangsters in the movies do. And the little gentleman said just one word in his language and took my arm and we went into the elevator.
I looked towards the door and there was Jeff just coming in through the turn-around door. The four men followed us into the elevator. The door shut, and up we went.
When the elevator stopped we walked out and along the soft carpet of the hall to a door. He opened it and two smaller men dressed in white that had been sitting down inside the little hall got up and rolled their eyes when they saw the six of us coming in.
You never saw such a room as we went into—big! And out of it opened a hall and some other rooms. It was like an apartment. Well, we came in and the two boys in white stood outside the door and rolled their eyes.
Nobody sat down and the leader of the four began to talk, soft and fast and pretty dangerous. And then the three others just as fast and just as dangerous. But, of course, I couldn’t understand ’em, me not ever being educated in any language but our own, including pig Latin.
The little gentleman never said a word till they had all said their say and stopped. Then he reached up and opened his coat and snatched open his shirt. And I saw where the blood had come from. Just belo
w the hollow in his neck was a scratch about two inches long. It had stopped bleeding and anyway wasn’t anything but a scratch and I was glad.
But would you believe it, those four big men looked and stared and their eyeballs stuck out of their sockets like they had seen their mothers killed in front of ’em. Their hands fell open at their sides and they just stared and stared at the gentleman’s naked chest. It was lighter than his face, like the smooth ivory keys on Aunt Helga’s piano, and full of little muscles like strong men in shows that lift weights and have a light on ’em when the curtain goes up, then they pose, back and front and sides, like that.
I watched ’em stand there gawking at him. And then all four at once, they let out their breath that they had been holding and I saw that something awful had happened. It was like as if somebody told you something had happened to God. No, that ain’t it exactly, but it was like that, or if the priest was blessing the sacrament and opened the little doors and the cup wasn’t there.
He told ’em what had happened, not excited at all, the little muscles tightening and letting go in his chest that was still bare. And then he showed ’em how, when he’d first come to, he had felt for something around his neck and it wasn’t there. His eyes and his hands told it all as plain as if I could understand him. And it seemed like I knew that what he was telling them was gone meant more than anything anybody could lose.
It must have been that thing that had scratched his chest when it got took off of him. And then I remembered the pimply guy, the fat one, grabbing him by his coat, right there on his chest where the scratch was at.
“That was it,” I thought. And so I interrupted ’em. “Listen,” I said, “what is it you lost? Because if it’s so valuable, that it makes these men look like they look…” I says—and they sure did look like they had just come off of a rolly coaster. “If it’s something you had around your neck,” I says, “why, you better let me go back and look if I can’t find it,” I says.
I could see from their faces they couldn’t understand a word, but he did. Anyway, he said no, I couldn’t go back. But I made him see that nobody had seen me go out with him.
I told him I worked there and if Moe found anything sweeping up after the cops come, I could get it away from him. Moe owed me a good turn after the FBI man trying to get me to tell him what I knew about Moe not being the cousin of those Russians he got into this country with, as if he was. I made the little gentleman see what I meant.
“Wait,” he said, and he turned and spoke to one of the boys in the white suits. The boy opened a door and went out. Then the gentleman come over to me and “Cold,” he said. Then the boy come back and he carried a coat, just like the one he had on himself: tight, made to button up high at the neck, and with wide, flaring skirts. Only this coat was all gold—not like a ring is gold—but gold cloth and was lined with silk, as soft as a rose, and the bluest blue you ever saw.
He took it from the boy and held it for me and somehow I knew it was his coat from his own country and I knew that the two boys were his servants. But I sure wished I knew whether the other four that was so mad at him was his friends or not.
I put it on when he held it for me, and it was like an evening coat that a rich social register debutante might wear over her formal and it was warm and, boy, did I need that.
“Money,” he said, and pushed a roll of bills into my hand, and I started to the elevator.
“Wait,” I said, “what is it I’m going to look for?” I said.
“A ring,” he says and he showed me the one he was wearing.
“Like this,” he says, “only bigger. On a chain. Gold,” he says.
“All right,” I says.
Then he touched my wrist where his coat sleeves were a little too short for me.
“Please. Do not you go into danger even for the ring. Better you not be hurt,” he says, quiet and gentle.
“I’m all right,” I says. “I’ll come back here, if I find it.”
“I come with you,” he says, but I knew that was the worst thing he could do. So I told him he’d have to stay right there, and I made him promise.
I looked at the bills—two hundreds, some fives and some ones. So I pushed the hundreds back at him and he pushed ’em back at me. But I couldn’t stand there all night playing handball with bills bigger than I ever thought I’d see, so I looked at the number on the door and started. Then I saw that the four black hats was going with me.
“No,” I says, “no.” But they never even looked at me. “I’m going by myself,” I says, “I’ve got to.”
“Yes,” he says.
“By myself,” I says to the four tall ones that made him look so little.
“Go alone,” he says. “You will not see them.” And so I went to the elevator, and them, too, leaving him standing there in the door with the two boys peeking out over his shoulders. And when the elevator come we got in. And when it got to the lobby floor I got out. And there was Jeff, standing inside the turn-around door, looking halfway between scared and mad and smoking a cigarette, and was I never more glad to see anybody.
CHAPTER THREE
AS I WALKED THROUGH the people in the lobby, I was thinking, “I’m glad the four men in the overcoats didn’t get out when I did.”
“Christ,” says Jeff, “let’s get out of here.” And we did. As the door turned around with me in it, I heard him say, “I didn’t like to call the cops,” but just then the door spanked me and I was out in the cold. And then out come Jeff, still talking. “Couldn’t do a goddamned thing—what was I to do?”
I didn’t say anything, so he kept on talking.
“Here’s the cab down here. We’ll have to use it. I don’t know where to get a circus wagon for your troupe, or I would get one.”
As we swung into Michigan he looked back and says “Jesus.” And there came the black car with the chauffeur and the four men in it.
“Are you all right?” he says, and “What happened, for Chrissake?”
I could see he was more scared than anybody ever got about me, except Pop, and just pretty nearly like Pop when he had been scared about me.
Like the first time they come for Willie and took him away. It was long after Uncle Ulrich and Aunt Helga had took us in to live with them after our house got burnt up, and me not daring to tell why I didn’t want us to live there in the same house with them.
And Willie being so strange and him and Uncle Ulrich acting as if they knew something, and me hearing sounds in the house at night, like Willie maybe bringing in those girls he was always hanging around the drugstore talking to. And Aunt Helga’s mouth getting tighter and tighter, and then that first time them coming to get Willie. One at the front door and one at the back door. And I went along to follow ’em down to the police place and had to sit there almost until morning before I could get ’em to let him go.
Pop was sure cussing and mad then, just like Jeff was now, trying to shake off that black car that never seemed to get stopped by a red light, till finally it did, and we finally lost ’em; or anyway we thought we lost ’em.
Now here I was, and I couldn’t say a word because I knew Jeff would never understand, and anyway what could I say? I knew if I told him that I was going to try to find the ring and take it back to the Drake to the gentleman without those other four seeing me, I knew Jeff would try to stop me. He was right to be scared. I should have been pretty scared, too, because I didn’t know, see, who these four were or who the gentleman was. But more than that I didn’t know what they was to each other.
They had looked so sore when they had caught up with him and me, there in the lobby. And why were they following me now? I could see from their faces that they hadn’t understood one word he had said all the time he was talking to me in that upstairs parlour, and he hadn’t explained anything. Or were they mind readers, maybe—they sure looked like they might be.
So how could I tell Jeff what I didn’t even know, and him already so worried about what I had got into. Though w
hy he should be, us being nothing to each other except saying hi-ya as I come to work at midnight, or sometimes a cup of coffee at the Greek’s after I got through work. But he was real worried, I could see, and somehow I didn’t seem to mind.
“Take me back to the café, Jeff,” I says.
“What for?” he says.
“I work there, dummy,” I says, “and I don’t want to get fired. I can tell ’em I hurt my knee and you took me to a doctor.”
“Didja?” he says, looking around.
“Nothing to bother,” I says, “just knelt on some broken glass,” I says.
“Is that blood on your dress, where you knelt on it?” he says.
“It ain’t rosebuds painted on it,” I says. And then he cussed some more and wanted to take me to a doctor sure enough. But I made him stop just before we got to Butch’s place. And while he was getting out of his side I got out of mine and he couldn’t catch me till just at the door he caught me and held me tight, for a minute.
And suddenly I felt weak as water, because I knew, see, that Jeff wanted me not to go ahead with what I was getting into. Looking back, I wonder, suppose I had quit, right there, I would have been spared what I went through that night and how many days and nights after. But it’s sure funny what makes us do things. Pop always said I was a bullhead.
“No,” I says to Jeff. But I was saying no to something in me that wanted all of a sudden to let Jeff tell me what to do about everything. But “No,” I says and saying it to both of us gave me the strength to go ahead.
“What the hell will I do with this hundred dollar smacker?” Jeff says, to cover up that he had been holding me and that we both knew I had won.
“Well, keep it,” I says. “Have you got a pin?” So he gave me one. And I pinned a tuck in my dress where it was torn across the knees so the blood didn’t show. And it looked right nice. Like a new style it looked. And I went in and left him.