Ride The Pink Horse

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  He pushed his hat on the back of his head, lit a cigarette and watched the Plaza fill with moving people. Smoke smudged from the chimney pots in the thatched roofs, and the acrid stench of chile became more acrid. His stomach remembered that he hadn’t eaten since noon. A dry sandwich, a cup of coffee somewhere along the line. He’d eat later. What he thirsted for was a cold bottle of beer. Ice cold. Time enough for that after he met up with the Sen. He could wait.

  Through the tree leaves and the colored lights and the moving people he saw across the Plaza a patch of the hotel where he’d dumped his bag. He’d forgotten it. Past nine now. He wasn’t worried about the bag. He wasn’t even worried about a place to sleep. He’d bunk with the Sen if the big shot couldn’t find a room alone for him. He could pick up the bag later, or let the Sen pick it up.

  About time to move. He dropped down from the ledge to the street, almost colliding with two giggling girls. The littlest one said “Hello.” She was thin as a child and painted like a whore. He went past her, past other girls and women and children and men, not seeing them. He went past Tio Vivo, whirling now, children clinging to the wooden horses, the thin music trying to be gay.

  He rolled down the street past the thatched booths to the intersection, crossed over to La Fonda. The roof show was over but the walk in front of the hotel was jammed with people. He shoved through them into the lobby. It looked like The Sherman when the Democrats were meeting in convention. Only the Democrats didn’t wear fancy costumes. Finding the Sen was still a needle in the haystack, even if it had narrowed to one particular haystack. He fought his way across the lobby to the Cantina but he couldn’t push inside. There were fifty or more ahead of him trying to push their way into the tightly packed cocktail bar. He’d have to wait.

  He turned away and started back across the lobby. But he stopped. The switchboard, the single house phone, brought the first right idea he’d had tonight. The place to catch the Sen was in his room. He might not be there now but the desk would furnish the number. He hitched his shoulders and began a casual walk forward as if the desk clerks were conscious of him and of his purpose.

  The quiet voice spoke behind him. “Hello, Sailor.”

  He didn’t turn. He halted in his tracks. Then slowly he swiveled. “Hello, Mac,” he said.

  McIntyre still wore the silly black hat with the bobbles, the red sash winding his white pants. The bobbles were red and green and yellow. “Come for Fiesta?” he asked.

  Sailor said, “Sure,” hearty as if he meant it.

  The Sen couldn’t have hired McIntyre to protect him. It couldn’t be that. Mac wasn’t the Sen’s man. He’d gone in when the reform commissioner was appointed. He’d been against the Sen for too many years to have gone over to his side. “You here for Fiesta?” Sailor asked.

  “Yeah,” McIntyre said.

  “Kinda interesting, isn’t it?” Two guys from Chicago talking it over in a foreign town.

  “See Zozobra burn?”

  “Yeah, I saw it,” McIntyre said.

  Close-mouthed, McIntyre. Tight-mouthed and gimlet-eyed, his eyes going through what you said into what you were thinking. Sailor stirred. The silly hat struck him again. He laughed. “Have to pick up a costume, I guess. Only got in this afternoon.” He wanted to ask and he did. “You been here long?”

  “A week,” McIntyre said.

  Sailor kept satisfaction out of his face. “Well, be seeing you,” he said. His foot was out to move away but McIntyre spoke again. “Where you staying, Sailor?”

  It was a casual question but he was afraid of it. It caught him flat and he answered the truth. “I haven’t got a room yet. Kind of hard to find one during Fiesta.” He wouldn’t put it past Mac to have him jugged as a vag. If it suited his purpose. He laughed quick. “If I’m out of luck, I got a friend here who’ll put me up.”

  “Yeah,” McIntyre said. Not “Yeah?” but “Yeah.”

  He knew the cop was thinking of the Sen and he ought to have been thinking of the Sen too but the funny thing was, he hadn’t been. He’d been thinking of the merry-go-round man, of fat dirty Pancho Villa. If he was out of luck, Pancho would take care of him.

  This time he broadened his smile. “Be seeing you, Mac,” he said and this time he walked away. Walked away while McIntyre was saying, “Take care of yourself, Sailor.” Saying it like he might need to walk carefully. McIntyre didn’t know what he knew. McIntyre didn’t know Sailor had the Sen where he wanted him.

  He walked out of the hotel, not stopping at the desk. Because he’d had a quick one, a real one in the dome. McIntyre was trailing the Sen and the farther Sailor stayed away publicly, the safer he’d be. Mac knew a lot of things. He might know that Sailor was one of the Sen’s boys. Was, meaning, had been. But again, he might not know it. Tomorrow was time enough to get the Sen’s room number. The Sen wouldn’t be running away. Not before he knew Sailor was looking for him.

  Sailor went out again into the cool of night. After the fumes of perfume and liquor and body stench in the lobby, the night was a cool drink. He still hadn’t had that cold bottle of beer. He still wanted it though the edge was off want after the stink of liquored breaths in the hotel. He didn’t care to be caught in another trap like that one. If he could have beer here on the Plaza it would have a taste.

  He stopped at one of the thatched booths and asked. The wizened woman could barely speak English. Her head was bound in a blue turban and there were chile stains on her white apron. “No beer,” she said. Her smile was toothless. “Pop.” He didn’t want pop but the cold moisture clinging to the bottles made his dry throat ache. He bought a coke and he drank it standing there, everyone around him speaking in foreign tongue, Spanish-speaking. He felt suddenly lonesome, he who was always separate and never lonesome. He felt uprooted, he who had no roots but the Chicago streets; a stranger in an alien place. He finished the pop and walked on. His throat wasn’t dry but he still had a beer thirst. Pancho could tell him where to cure it. His faith in Pancho was childlike. But even as he mocked the faith, it became the stronger.

  He swung down into the park and over to Tio Vivo. He couldn’t get near. It was ten o’clock but the kids were still lined up knee deep, pushing against the red palings. The music strummed with a thin brightness, Tio Vivo spun about, young not old, around and around. Over the heads of the kids he could see the brigand, sweat running from his broad brown face, his muscles bulging as he wound the crank that sent the horses galloping over their circled course.

  Later he’d see Pancho. About a beer and a room. He lit a cigarette and strolled on, out of the Plaza, back to the ledge under the portal of the Old Museum. It was occupied now; in one corner a thin mother with a weary, hopeless face held a sleeping child across her lap. Two brown-skinned punks with loose lips took up the rest of the ledge, swinging their legs over the edge, boasting in spic of their intended prowess during La Fiesta.

  3

  He leaned against the wall watching the movement of the Plaza, the dark leaves turning under the strand of lights, the Spanish musicians sawing their strings in the lighted bandstand, the shrill of laughter and the thin whine of tired children, the cries of the vendors. Over it all he could hear, or thought he could hear, the tinkling music and the whir of Tio Vivo.

  In the streets the costumed, giggling girls walked clockwise and the slack-mouthed boys counter-clockwise. They spat insult and their eyes invited as they passed. Until the game was worn dull and they stopped together to regroup boy and girl, girl and boy.

  “Hello.” He hadn’t realized that he too was a part of the Fiesta night until she spoke.

  It was the same kid he’d almost bumped into earlier. She was just as immature as he’d thought on first glance, her breasts barely formed, her legs and arms thin, child-voiced, wise-eyed. Her small face and mouth were painted, her hair was a black fuzz. But she wore a red rose in her hair, her red flowered skirt was full and gay, her thin white blouse was embroidered bright. She was La Fiesta. She was pretty in a pert
, child way; he wanted none of her. None of any woman until this business was done. Then he could have one worth having, a sleek one, washed and ironed and perfumed, one he’d find in La Fonda, not on the streets. He said “Hello” and looked away, waiting for her to move on, wanting her to move on.

  But she didn’t move. She stood there in front of him, looking up at him out of her bold black eyes, laughing up at him. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  He said, “Sailor.”

  She giggled and the girl with her giggled. The girl with her had the red rose and the flowered skirt and the thin blouse, the frizz of black hair and the bold black eyes but she wasn’t so young. She had a big nose and big witless mouth smeared with lipstick. Her breasts sagged under the blouse. When she giggled, he looked at her with revulsion. “That’s a funny one,” she said.

  “Is it?” he asked coldly and he looked back at the pretty one, the kid.

  She said, “Sailor. That’s a funny name, Sailor.”

  The homely girl said, “My brother, he was a sailor in the war. That is where you get the name Sailor, no?”

  “No,” he said, and he didn’t smile. “I got it because I had trouble with the whole damn Great Lakes navy.” He hadn’t thought for a long time where the name came from.

  “My brother he was in the Army,” the kid said. “Were you a soldier, Sailor?” She giggled when she said it that way and her friend giggled with her.

  He said, “I wasn’t in the war. I had flat feet.” It was a lie. The Sen had kept him out of the war. He wanted to get away from the girls but they had him backed against the wall. They saw him shift and they stopped laughing.

  “I am Rosita,” the kid said. “This is my friend, Irene.”

  “Pleased to meetcha,” Irene said.

  Rosita was craning around for something. She found it because she beckoned with her thin hand. “This is my cousin, Pila.”

  He hadn’t seen the third girl until that moment. With the introduction, Rosita diminished her again to the background. There was no reason for him to look in Pila’s direction, she hadn’t moved, she hadn’t spoken. But he looked because he would look anywhere for escape from the scrawny kid and her companion. He looked into Pila’s eyes, black fathomless eyes; he saw the stone inscrutability of her brown face. She was square and strong, her face was square, her strong black hair lank about her face. The skirt she wore was bedraggled and worn, her blouse faded, the flower in her hair a joke. She was young, young as the kid, and she was old, old as this old country.

  He was frightened of her, the same fright he had felt earlier when twilight was deepening over the little Plaza and the absence of life under the lights and banners a thing unreal. She was unreal, alien; yet she belonged and he was the alien. She, not the kid, was Fiesta; something deep and strong and old under the tawdry trapping, under the gimcracks. Something he didn’t understand because he was a stranger.

  He knew a frantic urge to bolt, not only from her but from the skinny kid and the homely girl friend. He was saved by the homely one, by Irene. Tired of his disinterest, her protruding black eyes were watching the walkers and she cried out, “Look, there is Eleuteriol”

  She pulled at Rosita’s arm, moving as she spoke. Rosita called over her shoulder, “Goodbye, Sailor.” He looked again at Pila, fearing she wouldn’t leave, but she turned without speaking and tagged after them. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead.

  Behind him there was a snicker and he turned on the two gangling youths sitting up on the ledge. He didn’t have to say anything, the face he gave them was enough. It usually was enough for punks. He was reassured by their scuttling eyes; the withdrawal of their scorn.

  He walked away. The merry-go-round was still turning although the circle of children was thinner. He could breathe Pancho’s sweat this far away. Pancho could find him a room but it would be stained with sweat. It would stink of sweat and chile and stale garlic breaths. He didn’t live like that; he hadn’t come here to live like that.

  He stepped up on the curb out of the way of the street crowd, walked slowly towards the La Fonda cross section. The Sen had to take care of him. Or else. McIntyre ought to be gone by now. Sailor was going to see the Sen tonight and the Sen could buy the beers.

  He walked hard, swaggering his decision, but at the white bank building he stopped and fell back into the shadow. There was a group rounding the corner of the ticket office, a group of swells. They were laughing; they were too gay, satin-and-silk-and-velvet gay, champagne gay; they were a slumming party, leaving their rich fastness momentarily to smell the unwashed part of Fiesta. The Sen was with them.

  Sailor stood there, flat in the shadows. He hadn’t planned meeting the Sen bulwarked by blooded friends. In all his plans he’d seen only himself and the Sen, alone, face to face. Nothing like this. Anger swelled in him. A big fair fellow in black velvet cavorted by, his arms around a hard-faced bitch in white lace and a small baby-faced blonde in a coral shawl. The bitch screamed, “Hubert, you’re divine!” and the baby face snuggled closer. She had a thin chain of diamonds about her throat and she stunk of whisky.

  Sailor didn’t see the next couple, he saw the Sen approaching and out of anger he stepped out and confronted him. “Hello, Sen,” he said.

  The look on the Sen’s face was worth waiting for. The protuberance of nose, the sleepy dark eyes, the thin lips and brush mustache—he’d watched them in his dreams react just this way. The moment of total disbelief, the realization and the blank masking of all reaction, the groping for customary patronizing sureness. It was all there just as he’d seen it. He’d surprised the Sen.

  The weasel face was coming back to life. The Sen hadn’t spoken to him and he didn’t now. He spoke to the girl with him. “Go on with the others. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  Sailor hadn’t noticed the girl. He looked at her as the Sen spoke to her. Looked at her and was sickened. For her. He’d never been face to face before with clean beauty. She was young and fair, silvery blonde, and her eyes were blue and clean as sky. She was taller than the Sen, half a head taller, but she had to lift her face to look at Sailor.

  When she looked at him he blurred his eyes so that he saw only the starched white ruching of her headdress, the starched white flare of her skirt. She didn’t look at him as if he were a bum, her eyes were uncurious, casual.

  He knew who she was. Iris Towers. Daughter of the railroad-and-hotel-and-bank Towers. Society page. He didn’t know why she’d be with the Sen. He didn’t know she was the reason, the why of all; he refused to admit she was that.

  “Go on,” the Sen said. His voice was rich and tender. The Sen should have been big and handsome for his voice. He was undersized and mean; his voice was a lie. “I won’t be a minute.”

  She smiled. “All right, Willis.” She smiled at Sailor too before she ran ahead, calling, “Wait, Hubert, Ellie! Wait for me.”

  The Sen and Sailor watched her until she caught the group at the corner. When Sailor stopped looking after her, the Sen was watching him out of his narrow eyes. His eyes weren’t crafty at this moment; they were dull with rage. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  Sailor said, “Maybe I came for Fiesta.” He wasn’t afraid of the Sen or the Sen’s rage because the tickets were in his hands. There was no reason to be afraid of the Sen. The big shot wasn’t on top any more. He said it jauntily, “Maybe I came for Fiesta.”

  The Sen wasn’t amused. “What do you want?” he asked.

  Sailor dropped the antics. “You know what I want,” he said.

  “What do you want?” the Sen repeated.

  His voice was as tight as the Sen’s. “I want my dough.”

  The Sen took a breath. “I paid you off,” he said. Said it as if he didn’t know it was a dirty lie.

  “You paid me five Cs,” Sailor said. “There’s another grand due. You offered fifteen hundred for the job.”

  The Sen wet his thin lips. “I said five hundred,” he began, “and I’d take care
there wasn’t any trouble. There hasn’t been any trouble.”

  “Not yet.” Sailor smiled. He waited a minute. “But you’d better come across with my dough. There could be.” He stood there, planted on both feet, his left hand out, waiting. His right hand was in his right-hand pocket where it belonged.

  The Sen’s heavy black brows twitched. His black mustache twitched too. His eyes were nervous, not because of Sailor, the Sen still thought he was in the driver’s seat where Sailor was concerned. He was nervous because the girl was fading from sight. The silvery blonde girl was going away with the fair young fellow and the other big young fellows, the way she ought to.

  The Sen hung out his hand, the short nervous gesture of the platform, of the private office. “I can’t talk now,” he said querulously, “I’m with a party.”

  “A thousand bucks,” Sailor repeated. He was smiling, he was laughing.

  Anger bounced up in the Sen. Nothing deep, nothing to tighten the hand on the gun. Just a spurt of mad. “I don’t carry that kind of money on me.” He implied Sailor should know that “See me tomorrow.”

  He was ready to pass but Sailor stood in his way. “Where?” he asked. “When?”

  “At the hotel. Tomorrow morning.” He brushed by but Sailor’s voice caught him before he could run. “McIntyre’s here,” Sailor said.

  The Sen jerked to a stop. When he looked up at Sailor again the fear had gone out of him. The crafty look had come under his eyelids and under his brush mustache. “McIntyre’s here,” he repeated unpleasantly.

  Sailor gave him his moment. Gave it to him in full. Then he spoke. “He’s been here a week,” he said. “I only got in today.”

  He let it lay right there. It was good to watch the snake of fear coiling again in the Sen. The Sen got it all right, same as Sailor had got it earlier. McIntyre wasn’t following Sailor.