Ride The Pink Horse

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  He asked ironically, “You haven’t been doing Fiesta?”

  McIntyre chose the table again. Not in line of the entrance this time. Around in back of the tree where the Sen would have to look for them. And finding them couldn’t act as if he hadn’t seen them. McIntyre was smart as hell. He even chose the chair he wanted, putting Sailor’s back to the entrance, placing himself where he could glimpse anyone coming in. But the branches of the tree hid his face.

  “I caught a bit of the parade,” McIntyre said, “but I decided to skip the Chocolate. Not that it didn’t sound peaceful but the fashion show with it—” he shook his head. “I didn’t think a guy like me would be any asset.” He smiled. “Mrs. McIntyre will be mad at me for missing it.”

  He’d never thought of McIntyre having a Mrs. McIntyre. He’d never thought of McIntyre having any life but on the Chicago streets. Like a dog. Smelling out trouble, trotting after trouble, digging up old bones of trouble. Until the commissioner boosted him to a desk and a leather chair. Where he could rest his nose and his feet, send other cops out to follow trouble.

  Sailor said, “I didn’t know you were married.”

  “Eighteen years,” Mac said. “Have one girl in college this year.”

  The waitress who came to the table wasn’t pretty or young; her mouth wore tired lines and she didn’t care that they weren’t ready to order. She left the table and stood with another waitress by the open-air fireplace. The pert blonde wasn’t around.

  Sailor said, “Sure you don’t want something?”

  “I’d take a drink. This Sunday law is a hindrance. To a working man.”

  “I could use a beer.” Then he grinned. “Thought you were here for the show.”

  “That’s right,” was all McIntyre said. “What did you do this afternoon?”

  “Took a nap,” Sailor said like Mac had said.

  McIntyre didn’t ask any questions. As if he knew where. But he didn’t know if he too had been sleeping. Sailor didn’t want Mac to know. He didn’t want to have to explain that he hadn’t been laying with an Indian girl; that she had tagged after him, that was all.

  There were a few parties in the Placita, drinking parties. None of the Sen’s crowd. The parties had brought their own bottles; the men pulled them out from under the tables like in prohibition days. The waitresses brought set-ups. The Sunday law evidently didn’t cover drinking, only selling of drinks.

  Sailor said, “I wonder if he went to the Chocolate.” He could see the Sen’s greedy eyes watching dressed-up girls trot by. No. The Sen would be watching Iris Towers. No one else. But his eyes would still be greedy.

  “No. He went to Tesuque to a private affair.” It surprised him again, that McIntyre was keeping that close tabs on the Sen.

  “The Van der Kirks’ ranch,” McIntyre said. “They came over during the war and stayed. Not poor refugees. Diamonds.”

  Not poor if the Sen were there. The Sen didn’t visit the poor. He used them. For his dirty work.

  “Will he get back in time?” Sailor wondered aloud before he realized it was out loud.

  “I think he will,” McIntyre said. “I think he’ll be anxious for you to tell him what I was talking about at lunch.”

  Sailor pulled in his belt. “I can’t talk to him with you sitting here.”

  “I’ll tell him myself,” McIntyre said without inflection.

  If he could only bust open McIntyre’s head, see what was inside it. If he could only lay out those little squares, like lottery tickets, each one labeled with a name and a thought and a plan. Was his name on the winning ticket, the losing ticket; or was it the Sen’s? He couldn’t ask McIntyre; he could only sit tight and wait. And make talk.

  “How many kids you got?”

  “Two girls and a boy.” Talk suited McIntyre. He too had to wait.

  McIntyre would live in a suburb, Evanston probably. A nice house, maybe white pickets, maybe a green hedge. A green lawn and trees and flowers; Mac cutting the grass on a summer Sunday, shoveling snow off the walks on a winter morning. Mrs. McIntyre in a tiled kitchen fixing him and the kids good dinners.

  “Patsy, the oldest, she’s the one in college. University of Chicago. Molly, she’s the pretty one, still in High. She wants to be a criminologist.” He smiled at memory. “Ted’s only twelve. Eagle Scout this year. Scouting’s a good thing for boys.”

  “So is being born in the right part of town,” Sailor said.

  McIntyre said quietly, “I was born four blocks from where you were, Sailor.”

  He hadn’t known that. Long as he’d known Mac, he hadn’t known he came from the old ward. His mouth twisted. “How did you get out?”

  “Not any easy way.” His eye was on Sailor.

  “You think I came out easy?”

  Mac didn’t answer that. He said, “I joined the force when I was twenty-one. That was twenty years ago, twenty years last spring.” He kept his eye on Sailor. “It isn’t easy pounding pavements summer and winter. Lots of work, little pay in those days.” His mouth tightened. “What I grew up with down there, from the time I was a kid, made me want to make the world better, not worse.”

  Sailor said belligerently, “Your old lady didn’t scrub floors, I bet. I’ll bet your old man wasn’t a drunken sot.”

  “My mother worked in a laundry. My father in the yards. No, he wasn’t a drunk, Sailor.” His eye was steady. “I’ve wondered often why with what you went through, you didn’t grow up feeling like I did. Wanting to make things better, not worse.”

  “I’ve made them better for me,” Sailor bristled.

  McIntyre didn’t say anything. He just looked until Sailor moved his eyes, pulled out his cigarettes. Sailor said to the cigarettes, “I don’t owe the world nothing. It never did anything for me.”

  McIntyre said, “I’ve heard a lot of you say that. It’s always seemed to me you were blaming the world for something missing in you.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Sailor scowled.

  “The world doesn’t care much what happens to us. Least that’s the way I’ve always figured. Like this table.” He flattened his hand on the painted metal. “It doesn’t care if you bump your shin on it. It doesn’t even know you’re around. That’s the world. The way I see it.” He lifted his hand and looked at the palm as if the paint had smeared it. He had a broad hand but his fingers were thin. “It’s up to you what you are. Good or bad. You get the choice. You can do anything you want to with yourself. You can use the world”—again he touched the table—”or you can break your toes on it. The world doesn’t care. It’s up to you.” He smiled faintly. “Seems I tried to tell you that a long time ago, Sailor.”

  Sailor said out of his scowl, “Maybe you think I chose to be starved and beaten when I was a kid.”

  McIntyre’s eyes saddened. Briefly. “I guess kids can’t choose. Not while they’re kids.” Then he looked straight into Sailor. “But when you’re old enough for choice, it’s up to you. The right way or the wrong way. Good or bad.”

  “You think I chose wrong.” Sailor was casual, drawing on his cigarette. “You think I shouldn’t have let the Sen help me out? Send me to college. The U of Chicago like your kid. You think maybe I ought to have pounded the pavements like you instead of letting a good guy help me out.” The Sen had been a good guy once. Sailor wouldn’t be where he was today if the Sen hadn’t given him a lift.

  McIntyre said, “There’s a lot of old stories, might be true, about a man selling his soul to the Devil.”

  Sailor jerked back his head and laughed. A good long laugh as if it were funny. Mac just sat there. And it wasn’t funny. The Devil could look like the Sen. The Devil didn’t have to have red horns and a forked tail and a red union suit; he could have a big snout and a brush mustache and wear the best clothes in Chicago. The Sen was a devil. If Mac knew half what Ziggy and Sailor knew, he wasn’t just shooting off his mouth, Sailor said, as if it were still funny, “As long as you’re preaching, Mac, what about God? He’s s
upposed to take care of us, isn’t He? That’s what they used to tell me at school. God’ll take care of you.”

  Mac said, “I don’t know.” He spoke slowly, like he was thinking it out. “Maybe it’s like it says in Scripture. You can choose between God and the Devil. Good or bad. Right or wrong. It’s written that way, more than once in The Book. I’m no preacher, Sailor. You know me better than that. But I see a lot of the wrong way. Makes a man think. The only way I can see it is that maybe God doesn’t want those that choose the Devil. The Devil’s own they used to call them. Maybe He withholds His hand, waits for them to turn to Him. To decide to go right, not wrong.” He added it so quietly he might have still been thinking. “Want to tell me where the senator was the night she was killed?”

  It was like something not real, sitting there in the quiet walled garden with the sun slanting through the crooked branches of the old green trees. Something in a book, Mac talking about God and the Devil and right and wrong. With a funny hat on his head. Not preaching but talking like a preacher only straight, a man to a man, not set up high in a pulpit talking to too many people and most of them not listening. Most of them having a Sunday-morning snooze. Then Mac said it and he was a copper again. A smart copper, catching you off guard. Only when he said it his face put on its mask suddenly and Sailor looked where he was looking. The Sen was there. The Devil in a white shirt and white pants and a red sash. And a vicious look that went from his eyes so quickly you wouldn’t believe it had been there.

  The Sen was looking for Sailor and he was caught by the eyes of Sailor and Mac before he could act as if he were looking for someone else.

  He tried not to be caught. He nodded as if he were greeting an acquaintance. Sailor spoke fast, knowing he had to grab onto the Sen before he faded out for another night. Even knowing how the Sen would be when they were alone, he spoke. “Hello. Thought you weren’t coming,” he said.

  That was when the viciousness fleeted through these narrow dark eyes.

  McIntyre took it over fast. He said, “I hope you don’t mind my intruding, Senator. I asked your secretary if he’d give me an introduction to you.”

  The Sen was caught. He stood there while Sailor said, “This is Chief McIntyre, Senator Douglass. From Chicago too.” As if the Sen didn’t know.

  The Sen sat down then, as if he were brittle, as if he might break if he sat down in the white metal chair. But his tongue was smooth the way it could be. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Chief. Seems strange we’d travel across the country to meet, doesn’t it?” His smile was right.

  “Yes,” McIntyre said.

  “I’d offer you a drink but the bar’s closed. As you know, doubtless.” He took his cigarette case and passed it. McIntyre took one. Sailor didn’t. He wasn’t offered. “You here on business, Chief?”

  “Partly,” McIntyre said. He accepted a light from the white-gold lighter. The lighter that never sputtered, that always made a good pointed flame.

  The Sen touched it to his own smoke. He acted surprised. “A little far from your bailiwick, isn’t it? It must be important for the Chief of the Bureau to handle it.”

  “It is important,” McIntyre said. “It’s about the death of your wife.”

  The Sen didn’t show any surprise. He just looked properly solemn. Solemn and a small bit touched with grief. He didn’t say anything. He could act; he was good at acting. But when he was acting, he wasn’t safe. He was too sure of himself, on top. Sailor didn’t like it. He kept his eyes under his lids on the Sen. He could keep them there because the Sen wasn’t paying any attention to him. This was between the Sen and McIntyre. The Sen finally put surprise and curiosity into a question. “Really?”

  “Yes,” McIntyre said.

  “But—” The Sen touched ash to the tray. McIntyre didn’t help. The Sen had to go on with it. “I thought you did a splendid job in solving her tragic end so quickly.”

  “We thought so too,” McIntyre said. “But Jerky Spizzoni didn’t kill her.”

  The Sen looked properly shocked. He could have said a lot of different things then but he didn’t. He was smart He waited.”That’s why I’m working,” McIntyre said. “I’m looking for the man who killed her.”

  The Sen took that and mulled it. He said, “It’s hard to believe. The commissioner was sure—”

  “New evidence,” McIntyre cut in. “Spizzoni didn’t get to town that night until after she was killed.”

  “The gun— The fingerprints—” The Sen acted innocent as hell. He fumbled as an innocent man would.

  “Somebody had Jerky’s gun. With his fingerprints still on it. It was smart,” McIntyre admitted.

  He didn’t know how smart it was. Ziggy had taken care of that. Visiting day. Ziggy had told the Jerk somebody wanted to buy his gat; to put a price on it.

  Jerky had handled that gun every day before he was sent up. When he was shipped, the Sen had made sure the gat was tucked away in a clean handkerchief, that no one else touched it. Maybe the Sen had known then. Maybe that was why Jerky had been sold out.

  “Have you any leads?” the Sen asked.

  Mac took his time. “I wouldn’t exactly say we had,” he admitted. “I thought maybe you could help us out. Maybe you knew something that might give us a lead.”

  The Sen shook his head. “I wish I could.” He put out the cigarette, half-smoked. “As I told the commissioner that night, I knew of no one who wished harm to my wife. She had no enemies. She wasn’t a woman who could ever make an enemy.” His eyes looked moist. When his voice made music that way, he could turn on the waterworks. “I appreciate your coming so far to tell me of this, McIntyre. I’d like to go over it with you more thoroughly.” His wristwatch was bold and expensive, a platter of gold that looked like platinum. “Right now I must dress for an engagement. Perhaps after Fiesta, or are you leaving before then?”

  “I’m staying for Fiesta,” McIntyre said. “Might as well as long as I’m here.”

  They were both getting up and Sailor got up too. He followed them out of the Placita, through the dim bar into the lobby. He didn’t know what they were saying, he tagged like a mongrel. In the lobby they were bowing goodbye. The Sen said, “Sailor will give you any information you need about that night. He knows the details. We’ve been over them often. In fact I don’t doubt he knows more than I about the death.” That was the undercut. There might have been others. “You’ll excuse me now.”

  He wasn’t getting away with this run-out, not if McIntyre’s whole bureau were standing with fixed attention. The dough was to be ready now. He wasn’t going to get away with not paying off.

  Sailor said, “I’ll go up with you while you dress.” The lips pulled back over the Sen’s teeth but Sailor continued, “There’s some stuff to go over.” And his hand was cold and hard in his right pocket. He wasn’t afraid. The Sen wouldn’t dare pull anything in the room right now; not with Mac knowing the two were going up there.

  The Sen said brusquely, “It can wait till later.”

  ‘This is new stuff,” Sailor said. That did it. Because the Sen didn’t know what Mac might have let out at lunch. He couldn’t take a chance. “You’ll excuse us then?” he asked McIntyre.

  “Yes,” McIntyre said. “I’ll see you later.”

  The Sen’s skinny legs were ill-tempered. They pecked the portal flagstones. Sailor swung easily at heel. Neither spoke until they reached the elevator, had to wait for the descent of die cage.

  The Sen said, “What else did he have to say?”

  Sailor didn’t answer because the elevator was down and some swells in blue-white hair and a lot of glitter were coming out. They had a speaking acquaintance with the Sen and he put on the platform manner automatically. He could always do it. Give him an audience and it didn’t matter what was knocking him out, he performed. As soon as he was in the elevator, behind the little elevator girl’s back, he put it away. But he didn’t repeat the question, not until they were on the fourth and outside his room. Not until he h
ad put in the key and was pushing open the door. “What else did McIntyre have to say?”

  Sailor stood behind him while the Sen picked up the two telephone message slips off the rug, read them before folding them tight in his palm. Sailor walked when the Sen did. The Sen went over by the telephone table. Sailor took the good chair, settled in it, his hat on his head, his hand comfortable in his pocket.

  “He was wondering about the insurance.”

  The Sen forgot the telephone. His black eyebrows were a tight angle. “What about it?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” Sailor said. “Just wondering. Maybe he’d like to know how long you had that policy on her. That fifty grand.”

  The Sen sat down slowly. On the edge of the bed. “So that’s it,” he said. He read the messages again. One he slid in his pocket the other he held in his hand. As if it were warm and living, a warm white body.

  “I don’t know,” Sailor said. “I don’t know what the angle is. All I know is he’s looking for the guy who killed your wife.”

  The Sen’s eyes were mean little slits. “He doesn’t have to look far.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Sailor kept his look steady on the Sen. Steady and with meaning.

  The Sen shifted his shoulders. “You’d better get off to Mexico. Right away. I can let you have five hundred now. I’ll send you the other five hundred when the banks open—”

  Sailor laughed at him. Laughed hard and harsh. “It’s five grand, Sen,” he said. “Not five C’s.” He was suddenly mad. He’d had enough waiting. “Don’t you have it yet?”

  “No, I don’t.” The Sen got mad too. He was like the old Sen when things didn’t suit him. “The banks are closed. I can’t pick five thousand dollars out of thin air. Or even one thousand. You’d better take the five hundred now and get out of here. Before Mac finds out you’re the one he’s looking for.”

  Sailor’s mouth was easy. The words came out of it easy. “I didn’t kill your wife.”

  He liked the way the Sen’s mouth opened. like a fish. He liked the fury that stiffened the fancy white shirt. He even liked hearing the Sen’s voice grate across the space between them. “You tried that one last night. If you didn’t kill her, who did?”