“Well . . . I guess I could go for a hamburger. And a Coke.”
“French fries?”
“You know, I serve so many of those—people eat them with everything—I can’t bear to look one in the face. Besides, they’re supposed to be the most fattening food of all.”
“What difference would that make?”
“That they’re fattening? You can’t be serious,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You might not believe it, but I exercise every day. Just sit-ups, and touching my toes, and jumping jacks, like we learned in gym, but I do. And I watch what I eat—which is not the easiest thing. If I wanted, I could just swipe something from every plate Booker puts out. If I didn’t watch myself, I’d turn into a whale. I wish I could lose ten pounds, just like that,” she said, snapping her fingers.
“You don’t have to—” Dett quickly interrupted himself, seeing the look on Tussy’s face. “I exercise, too,” he said, quickly.
“It’s not the same for you,” Tussy said. “You’ll never get fat,” Tussy said.
“How can you know?”
“Because you can tell from a person’s body type. You’ve got a naturally lean build. You could probably eat anything you wanted, and you wouldn’t gain weight. But me, I’m naturally . . . plump. If I didn’t put up a fight, I’d—”
“Okay.”
“Okay? Okay, what?”
“Okay, I can’t win. If I say you look perfect, you’re going to say I’m an idiot. Or, worse, lying. But I’m not going to agree with you, either, so I’ll just shut up.”
“Oh, go get the food!” Tussy said, flashing a smile.
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 19:54
* * *
“I’ve known you a long time,” Ruth said. “But I never understood you. Not until now.”
“If you didn’t understand me,” Sherman said, “why did you—?”
“—come out here? Make the promise I did?”
“Yeah. When you said you . . . would, I . . . I never expected that.”
“I couldn’t bear not to see you again, Sherman.”
“And that’s what you thought, that you wouldn’t?”
“I . . . guess I didn’t know.”
“Why do you think I came out there?” the big man said, abruptly. “To your place?”
“So you could . . . you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Sherman said, thick-voiced. “Tell me.”
“Have one of the girls,” Ruth said, looking down at her lap.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? What are you sorry about? You didn’t do—”
“I thought . . . Ruth, we made that . . . arrangement years ago. When I visit your place, how long does it take me to . . . do it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t—”
“Five minutes? Ten?”
“I guess.”
“And how long do I stay, afterwards?”
“You mean, when we talk? Sometimes it’s for . . .” Ruth’s voice trailed off, as the truth of what Sherman was telling her penetrated.
“Hours, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ruth said. She felt her eyes start to glisten, kept her head down.
“All those . . . preparations, you know what they were for?”
“Because of what you . . . the way you wanted to . . .”
“So, when you said you’d do anything for me, that was what you were thinking of?”
“No,” she said, lifting a tearstained face. “I mean, it was. I would do that, but that isn’t what I meant. It wasn’t all I meant.”
“I’m lonely,” Sherman Layne said, heavily. “I’m always lonely. You’re the only one who makes a difference, Ruth. You’re the one I talk to. The other . . . thing, all that stuff, it was just an excuse. I don’t even . . . do what you think.”
Ruth stood up, turned to face Sherman, and studied him for a long moment. Then she turned sideways and nestled herself into the big man’s lap.
“Tell me now,” she said, gently.
“I told you . . . what I wanted to do, so you could tell them. But that wasn’t what I did. I just did it the . . . regular way.”
“But why did you let me think it was . . . ?”
“Because, if that’s what the girls were expecting, and it didn’t happen, I knew they’d never say anything. For fifty bucks, they’d make it sound like it was the hardest thing they ever did, so the other girls wouldn’t want to do it, see? The rest, it was all so they would never see my face. Or hear my voice. Or even feel my . . . I always use a rubber, and I take it along with me when I’m done. Like I’m a phantom.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Sherman?”
“I didn’t think it would matter. Until you . . . said what you said, I never thought you . . . I never thought you cared about me that way, Ruth. I knew you were my friend. I knew you were the one I trusted. But I was being a cop. The kind of cop I taught myself to become.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know how cops are supposed to be ‘brothers in blue’? All for one, and one for all? Well, that’s a lie. The police depart-ment in Locke City is just like those apartments they build for poor people—the projects. The bids are always rigged, and there’s too much sand in the concrete. You can’t see it to look at them, but those buildings are rotting from the inside. One day, they’re going to just fall down, like a tornado hit them. They tolerate me because I do my job. I do it better than anyone they ever had. And someone’s got to solve the crimes.”
“Don’t they usually solve crimes?”
“Most crimes don’t need to be solved,” Sherman said. “Most murders, for example, you don’t have to look further than the family of the dead person to find out who did it. Most robbers, they keep doing the same thing, the same way, until they stumble into getting caught. And a lot of crime in Locke City isn’t crime, if you know what I mean?”
“Like my house?”
“Like your house. Like the casinos. Like the punch cards and the jukeboxes and . . . all the rest. And there’s other kinds, too, Ruth. There’s rich man’s crimes, which means just about anything a man does, as long as he’s got the contacts and the connections. And then there’s the crimes nobody gives a damn about.”
“What kind are those?” she asked, snuggling deeper.
“A guy beats his wife half to death, what’s going to happen to him?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing is exactly right. And his kids, unless he actually kills one, that’s on the house, too. To get away with crimes like that, you don’t even have to be rich.”
“All you have to do is be a man.”
“Yeah. A man can’t go to jail for burning down his own house. The only way he gets in trouble for that is if he tries to claim on the insurance. He can do what he wants with what he owns. The law says a man can’t rape his own wife. I mean, he can, but it’s not a crime. I had one of those, once.”
“A real rape? Not just . . . ?”
“A real rape. This guy, he broke her jaw, snapped her arm like a matchstick from twisting it.”
“And nothing happened to him?”
“He wasn’t even arrested,” Sherman said.
Ruth caught something in his tone, shifted in his lap, whispered, “That doesn’t mean nothing happened to him.”
“You think that’s wrong?” he said, almost in a whisper.
“No, Sherman,” Ruth replied, shifting her weight again. “No, I don’t.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 20:46
* * *
“Darryl, this is Mr. Moses,” Rufus said, almost formally. “He’s been in the struggle for longer than you and me have been alive, brother.”
“Yes?” Darryl said, his tone noncommittal.
“I would like it if you would talk. To each other,” Rufus said, his gesture encompassing both men. “In private.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 21:01
*
* *
“I know it’s just a movie, but this is scary,” Tussy said, sliding in close to Dett.
“I guess so,” he said, dubiously.
Tussy turned to her left, reached across Dett, and flicked the ash off her cigarette out his window. Her breast brushed lightly against his chest, firing a synapse that radiated through his groin. Her hair smelled like flowers he couldn’t identify.
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 21:02
* * *
“What do you say?” Rufus asked Darryl.
“He’s what we been looking for, Brother Omar. A true elder.”
“You think he should sit in when that boy comes around?”
“He’s got the wisdom,” Darryl said, “and he’s ready to share it with us. I be proud to have him.”
“No sign of Silk?”
“No, brother. But if he shows, Kendall’s going to ease him off—he’ll never see nothing.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 21:03
* * *
“Sherman, can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me anything,” the big detective said.
“When you were with those girls. In my house, I mean. Did you ever think about me?”
“You mean, think about you that way? Or . . . think about you while I was . . . ?”
“What’s the difference?”
“When you came out here, what did you expect?” Sherman countered.
“I expected to . . . I expected to prove my promise. About doing anything for you. So I didn’t know what to expect, but it didn’t matter.”
“You thought what I wanted, it was the same thing I did down in your basement, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “But it wouldn’t matter if you—”
“I do think about you that way, Ruth,” Sherman said. “Having . . . being with you. But not with you tied up, or blindfolded. I always wished, when I was coming out there, when we were talking, that it would be . . . in bed. Like . . . afterwards, you know?”
“Start by kissing me,” Ruth said, locking her hands behind Sherman’s neck.
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 22:14
* * *
A boxy ’51 De Soto moved slowly through the night-shrouded junkyard, every rotation of its tires recorded by watchers’ eyes.
The car came to a halt. A young man with a tall, rangy build got out. He was wearing a long black coat. The three orange feathers in the headband of his hat looked like candle flames in the night.
Two men approached, bracketing the young man.
“I’m here to see someone,” the young man said.
“Who?” the men asked, with one voice.
“I don’t know no name. Don’t want to know no name. I’m here to buy something. This is where they told me to come.”
“You come alone?” one of the bracketing men asked.
“Just me.”
“I don’t mean in the car,” the man said. “I mean, you got anyone waiting for you, close by?”
“No.”
“Come on,” the man said.
The young man followed the speaker; the silent man walked behind them, maintaining the bracket.
“In there,” the lead man said, pointing to a shack.
The young man entered. The room was shadowy, illuminated only by the distant glow of the junkyard’s arc lights coming through a single, streaked window. But he could make out a table, three seated men, and an empty chair.
“Sit down,” said the man seated directly across from the empty chair.
The young man did as he was instructed, resting his hands on the table.
“Say what you come to say,” he was told.
“My name is Preacher,” the young man said. “I’m the President of the South Side Kings.”
His statement greeted by silence, the young man continued, “We’ve got one on for tomorrow night with the Golden Hawks. At the lot over on Halstead.”
More silence.
“I heard that the white boys got cannons, this time. Pistols. Real ones. That never happened before.”
The young man took a breath, said, “I heard the white boys, they got guns from the Klan. We need guns, too. That’s why I came here. To buy some.”
“How much money you bring?” Darryl asked.
“I got three hundred dollars,” Preacher said, proudly, hoping his voice concealed that he had emptied his gang’s treasury for this purpose.
“You say ‘guns,’ you mean pistols?” Darryl asked.
“That’s right. ’Cause that’s what they got.”
“You ‘heard’ this, about the white boys having pistols?” Rufus said. “You didn’t say where you heard it.”
“From a lot of different places,” Preacher said, evasively. “Word’s out, all over.”
“What happens when the fight is finished?” Moses said.
“When it’s finished?” Preacher asked, puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What changes?” Moses said. “What will be different?”
“Oh, I see what you saying. What’ll be different is that those white boys will know the South Side Kings don’t play.”
“And now they think you do?”
“Hey, man, no! Everybody knows our club is—”
“So what would be different?” Moses said, implacably.
“I guess . . . I guess it depends on how the bop comes out.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Moses said. “Before you go out tomorrow night, you going to pour an ‘X’ out of wine on the sidewalk, right?”
“Sure. You got to—”
“What? Show respect for the dead? That’s what they get, for dying? The people who ain’t dead, they get together and say, ‘Oh, that boy, he had a lot of heart’?”
“What else could they get?” Preacher said, as surly as a corrected child. “Tombstone wouldn’t make no difference.”
“You don’t mind dying, do you, son?” the old man said.
“No, I don’t. I can’t. The only way a man can—”
“Courage is a good thing,” Moses said. “You can’t be a man without it. But getting killed don’t make you brave. And dying over a piece of ground that’ll never be yours—”
“It will be ours,” Preacher said. “After tomorrow night, that’ll be Kings turf.”
“Yours?” Rufus said, caustically. “Does that mean you going to build houses on it? Open a gas station, maybe? Could you sell it, get money for it?”
“That’s not what I’m—”
“Fighting for land, that’s what this country’s all about,” Rufus said. “White men killed a whole bunch of Indians, for openers. When they got done with the Indians, they started on each other. And they still doing it. But that’s land that’s got a deed to it, see?”
“You’re saying it ain’t worth it, over a little piece of vacant lot?” Preacher said. “But that’s not what this is about. If we let the Hawks take that lot, it’s like they took a piece of us.”
“Rep,” Rufus said.
“Rep,” Preacher agreed. “When I was in New York . . .” He paused, but if he was waiting for some indication that he had impressed the seated men, he was disappointed. “When I was just thirteen, I stayed with my uncle for the summer. He lives in Harlem. They got gangs there the size of armies. They run the city. When people see them coming, they get out the way.”
“That’s where you took your name?” Rufus said.
“Huh?”
“The biggest gangs in New York, the Chaplains and the Bishops, right? So . . . ‘Preacher,’ that would be like . . . representing what they are.”
“You know a lot,” Preacher said, not disputing Rufus’s intuitive guess.
“You know what? Those big gangs, those armies, they don’t own nothing,” Rufus said. “They got no real power. Only reason the Man hasn’t stepped on them is, right now, they making things easy for Whitey. Got half the folks in the big cities scared out of their mi
nds, so the politicians, nobody cares what crooks they are, long as they protect them from the crazed hordes of niggers. It’s all a shuck, son.”
“How do you know so much?” Preacher said. Not disputing, wondering. Whatever these men were, they were a lot more than gun dealers.
“We’re going to tell you,” Rufus said. “And I hope you listen.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 22:39
* * *
“Walker?”
“Huh?” Dett said, opening his eyes.
“You were asleep!”
“Me?” he said, noticing, for the first time, that his right arm was wrapped around Tussy.
“Yes, you!” she said. “I’ve heard of boys who take girls to drive-ins for all kinds of reasons, but I never heard of one who fell asleep on the job.”
“I didn’t . . . realize. It was just so . . .”
“What?” Tussy demanded.
“It was so peaceful,” Dett said, quietly. “Like when you come back in off the line—”
“You mean, in the war?”
“Yeah,” he said, quickly. “For days before, you can’t sleep. Not really sleep, I mean. You’re . . . tensed up, like there’s little jolts running through you. Guys talk, at night. Some do it just to pass the time, but mostly so you don’t think about what’s out there, waiting for you. They say, ‘Soon as I get back, I’m going to . . . get drunk, or get a woman, or . . .’ You know what I mean. But what happens is, when you finally do get back, it’s like someone slipped you a Mickey Finn. You go out like a light. Sleep for days, sometimes.”
“Like someone turned off your electricity?”
“Just like that,” Dett said. “And, here with you, it was like I . . . I don’t know what it was, Tussy.”
“Well, I’m not mad now,” she said, making a face. “But I know what would make me feel even better.”
“What? Just tell me and I’ll—”
“Talk, talk, talk,” Tussy murmured, her lips against his ear.
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