“But Jackie?”
“Jackie’s my chance,” Burke said.
“For what?”
“Not to stay destroyed,” Burke said.
“And he amounts to a lot more than jack shit,” Rickey said.
Burke nodded.
“I think it will be best,” Rickey said, “if you tell him of the threat.”
“I’ll tell him,” Burke said.
“And no one else,” Rickey said. “It will remain our secret.”
“Sure.”
41.
“YOU COULD TAKE Sunday off,” Burke said.
“I could,” Jackie said. “And if I told you I wasn’t scared I’d be lying.”
“You been scared since this started,” Burke said.
Jackie looked at him hard.
“You think so?”
“Sure. You’re alone against the world and people hate you. Of course you’re scared. Nothing wrong with that.”
“I’m not alone,” Jackie said. “I’m with Rachel.”
“Yeah,” Burke said. “You are.”
“And I had all those people up on Lenox Avenue when Paglia wanted to shoot me.”
“Yeah,” Burke said. “You did.”
Jackie grinned suddenly.
“And I got you.”
Burke laughed without amusement.
“Hot dog!” he said. “You want to take Sunday off?”
“Can’t,” Jackie said. “Then we get a letter saying they gonna kill me on Monday? I take Monday off? Tuesday? Wednesday? The season?”
Burke nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I get it.”
“You gotta see to protection for Rachel,” Jackie said.
“I’ve got Rickey’s word,” Burke said. “There will be people with her.”
Jackie nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Then we just go about our business.”
“It may be nothing anyway.”
“And if it’s something,” Jackie said, “you’ll handle it.”
“Sure,” Burke said.
“So you worry about it,” Jackie said.
“Sure,” Burke said.
42.
BURKE DROVE UP to Harlem to Wendell Jackson’s pool hall.
“I was hoping you’d let me borrow Ellis next Sunday,” Burke said.
“Why?”
“Got a letter says a guy is going to kill Robinson.”
“During a game?”
“Yes.”
“So what you think Ellis gon’ do?” Jackson said.
“I figure he can shoot,” Burke said.
Ellis, leaning against the wall by the door, had no expression on his face. Jackson smiled.
“That right, Ellis? Can you shoot?”
“I can shoot,” Ellis said.
“So who you want Ellis to shoot?” Wendell said.
“Anybody tries to kill Robinson.”
“That’d pretty sure be a white boy, wouldn’t it?”
“Pretty sure.”
Jackson shook his head.
“We like Jackie, don’t we, Ellis?”
Ellis nodded.
“And he wanna come up here, we look after him good,” Wendell said. “That so, Ellis?”
Ellis nodded again. Burke thought that Wendell sounded much more Negro than he had the last time they talked. It was like he was slipping into a disguise.
“But down there?” Wendell shook his head. “That be white man’s work.”
“Protecting Jackie?”
“You think Ellis go down there shoot some peckerwood ofay, and he get treated like a hero?”
“I think he could get away with it,” Burke said.
“That’s ’cause you white,” Wendell said. “Ellis and me know better. That’s white man business down there.”
Burke didn’t say anything for a time. Wendell and Ellis were still.
Then Burke said, “The deal with Paglia still there?”
“Ain’t heard that it’s not,” Wendell said.
Burke nodded.
“Okay,” he said, and stood and walked out of Wendell’s office, and through the hostile pool room to the street where his car was parked, and drove downtown.
He put his car in a midtown lot and walked down Eighth Avenue for three blocks to Freddy’s. It was the middle of the afternoon and things were slow. Burke went to the bar and laid a ten on the bar.
“My name’s Burke,” he said to the bartender, “I need to see Cash.”
“Cash?”
“Guy walks around with Mr. Paglia,” Burke said. “I need to see him.”
The bartender looked at the ten for a moment. Then he picked it up, folded it skillfully, and slipped it into his side pocket.
“Whaddya drink?” he said.
“Vat 69,” Burke said. “Ice.”
The bartender poured him the drink.
“I’ll see out back,” he said, “if anybody knows.”
Burke sipped his drink. There were three college-age kids in a booth drinking beer. He remembered before the war, he’d been working high iron at that age and he’d come to New York on a job. Drinking age was eighteen in New York. He remembered feeling liberated. There was a mirror behind the bar and the liquor bottles were arranged in front of it. Backlit by the reflection, they were prismatic. The daylight seeped in through the big front window and mixed with the colored lights on the jukebox, and the lesser lights in the ceiling. There was a large Miss Rheingold sign on the wall. A middle-aged couple sat at the other end of the bar, drinking Manhattans. She was a little old for him, probably, but he liked the slope of her thigh as she sat on the stool. I used to like quiet bars in the afternoon, he thought. I used to like hamburgers with a slice of red onion. I used to like a lot of things. The bartender returned and made the couple two more Manhattans, and drew three more beers for the kids, and poured more scotch into Burke’s glass. He didn’t say anything and neither did Burke. The bright blond waitress brought the beer to the booth. One of the kids said something to her and she shook her finger at him. The kids laughed and so did the waitress.
Cash came in and stood for a moment inside the door, waiting, Burke knew, for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. When he could see well, he walked to the bar and sat beside Burke.
“Shot of CC,” he said to the bartender. “Water back.”
He turned to look at Burke.
“Got a problem?” he said.
“Guy says he’s going to shoot Jackie Robinson,” Burke said.
Cash shrugged.
“What guy?”
“Guy I know,” Burke said.
“He tell you?”
“Somebody knows him told me.”
“You believe him?”
“Yes,” Burke said.
“So?”
“Could this be some game Paglia’s playing?” Burke said. “To get around the Jackson deal?”
“No,” Cash said. “He has someone shot, I do it.”
“You’re sure.”
“It ain’t Paglia,” Cash said.
The bartender brought Cash his drink. Cash took half of it in a swallow and chased it with some water.
“Whaddya need from me?” he said.
“I need another shooter,” Burke said.
“Me?” Cash said. “What the fuck has this got to do with me?”
Burke shrugged.
“Why would I do gun work for you or some jigaboo I don’t even know?”
Burke shrugged.
“You think it’s real?”
“Got to act like it is,” Burke said.
“Yeah,” Cash said. “You do.”
They were quiet. One of the kids got up from the booth and used the pay phone. The colors of the booze bottles gleamed behind the bar.
“So why’d you ask me?” Cash said. “For crissake, Paglia may have me kill you someday.”
“Asked Jackson already, he turned me down.”
“One of his own people,” Cash said.
“You w
ere the only other one I could think of.”
“Okay,” Cash said. “So you ain’t got many friends. What in hell made you think I’d do it?”
“You’re like me,” Burke said.
“Like you?”
“Un huh. Same kind of guy.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Cash said.
Burke looked into his drink. He thought the silvery transparent ice cubes looked really nice in the rust-colored scotch. He drank most of it.
“You know what we both are,” Burke said.
He looked at himself and Cash, in the mirror, among the pretty bottles. Two men, older than they’d had time to get, both with the same flat look in their eyes.
“We are what we do,” Burke said. “There’s nothing much else.”
“Except the gun and the balls,” Cash said.
Burke smiled a small joyless smile.
“Except that,” he said.
The bartender brought each of them a fresh drink without being asked. He took away the wet coaster napkins and polished the bar in front of them and put out fresh napkins.
“You think you’re as good as me?” Cash said.
“Don’t know,” Burke said. “Don’t care.”
Cash smiled.
“Me either,” he said.
They drank some of their whisky. The kids at the table stood and straggled boisterously out.
“You care what happens to this nigger, though,” Cash said.
“I’m being paid to.”
“If someone paid you more, would you walk away?”
“You know it doesn’t work that way,” Burke said.
Cash nodded.
“You’re right,” he said. “It don’t. Can’t.”
They both finished their second drink. Cash gestured at the bartender and he brought them a third.
Burke picked his up and looked at it for a moment.
Then he said to Cash, “I need you to help me.”
Cash drank some of his drink, washed it back with water.
“Okay,” he said.
43.
BURKE AND CASH went under the canopied entrance into Ebbets Field. They stood on the Italian marble floor under the baseball bat chandelier as the crowd moved around them.
“We’ll start with the upper deck,” Burke said.
Cash nodded. It was well before game time. The Pirates had warmed up and soon the Dodgers would come out. They moved slowly along the back wall at the top of the upper deck, looking. Burke didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He hoped he would know it when he saw it.
Below him on the field the batting cage was in place, and Dixie Walker was hitting. The pitchers were running in the outfield, except for Ralph Branca, who was scheduled to start. The rest of the team lounged alertly on the field in their immaculate whites with the blue trim. Some infielders were in the outfield. Some outfielders and one of the catchers were in the infield, making behind-the-back catches of pop flies. Making trick throws to first. Bruce Edwards would bounce the ball off his biceps before he threw it. Jackie was apparent where he stood, behind the batting cage, waiting his turn. Burke knew that Walker didn’t like playing with Jackie, but from here there was no sign of it.
They moved slowly along, looking at the spectators who had already started to come in. Mostly men, many of them with boys, scorecards already purchased; peanuts, and Coke, beer, and steamed hot dogs already going in.
Jackie got into the cage and began to hit. He always looked as if he would fly apart, Burke thought, when he hit. But the bat always came level when it made contact with the ball. Against the soft tosses of Clyde Sukeforth, it was all line drives. Burke always thought the pregame warmups were probably the kindest part of the game, unpressured in front of only an early scatter of fans, time to see who could spit tobacco the farthest, and check the stands for women, and talk of curve balls, and getting laid, and their favorite thing to drink. Most of them could talk about the war as well, but except for a few GI phrases, as far as Burke could tell, they did not.
They reached the Bedford Avenue end of the upper deck, where the right field screen began, and turned and began to stroll back. Looking at everyone, examining every place a man with a gun might hide. The crowd kept coming. The Dodgers starters were taking the infield: Robinson, Eddie Stanky, Reese, and Spider Jorgenson. They went all the way around the park to the center field stands, where Hilda Chester sat with her cowbell, and turned and started back. It was thirty-five minutes to game time. Red Barber and Connie Desmond were in the radio booth slung beneath the upper and lower decks. The umpires had come out onto the field, the crew chief talking to Burt Shotton at the Dodgers dugout. The Dodger Sym-Phony was parading. They came down to the lower grandstand and began the stroll again. As they went behind home plate, looking at everything, Burke saw Louis Boucicault come in with Lauren and a couple of bodyguards. They took a box seat along the third-base line.
“See the guy down there in the white sport coat,” Burke said. “With the girl in pink?”
Cash saw him.
“He’s involved in this thing.”
Cash nodded.
“No matter what might happen,” Burke said, “the girl doesn’t get hurt.”
Cash stared at him for a moment without comment. Then down at Lauren.
“Nice-looking head,” he said.
They moved on.
“If you were going to do it,” Burke said, “how would you do it?”
They stopped. Cash looked slowly around the field.
“This ain’t some freako killing, guy doesn’t care if he’s caught.”
“No.”
“Gotta be close,” Cash said. “Otherwise you got to smuggle a rifle in here. Good chance of getting caught.”
“So it’s a handgun.”
“Yeah. Which means down close to the field.”
“When he’s running in toward the dugout,” Burke said.
“Yes,” Cash said.
“So first-base line, behind the dugout.”
“Yes.”
They were silent.
“And I ain’t willing to sacrifice myself to do this,” Cash said.
“No.”
“So I gotta think I can get away with it.”
“Silencer?” Burke said.
“I would,” Cash said. “Wait until he’s coming to the dugout, and everybody’s on their feet cheering, and when he reaches the dugout, he’s, what, eight feet away, maybe? Pop! Put the gun on the floor, turn around, walk out. Ten, fifteen steps and you’re in among the crowd and nobody knows who you are.”
“So we’re looking behind the dugout.”
Cash nodded.
“Guy, probably first row of boxes,” he said. “Dressed so he can conceal a handgun. Maybe with a silencer.”
“Or carrying the gun in a bag,” Burke said. “Like he brought his lunch.”
“He’s got a silencer, it’s pretty sure to be an automatic,” Cash said.
Burke nodded.
“Which means he got a couple extra rounds,” he said.
“Good to keep in mind.”
The field was cleared. The umpires were gathered at home plate. Billy Herman came out of the Pirates dugout with his lineup card. Clyde Sukeforth brought the lineups out for the Dodgers. Cash and Burke went to stand in the aisle behind the Dodgers dugout. Burke stayed shadowed in the runway.
“Don’t want the guy I pointed out to see me,” Burke said.
Cash shrugged.
“We have to shoot,” Burke said, “I’d just as soon not explain it to the cops.”
“We have to shoot,” Cash said, “we hotfoot it out of here right after, just like the shooter would have. Be in Coney Island looking at broads, before any cops show up.”
“Okay, nobody in this thing knows you,” Burke said. “See what you see, behind the dugout.”
Cash moved along the aisle, looking at the people. The Dodgers ran out to the field, Jackie among them, trotting, pigeon-toed, to first. Bil
ly Cox swung the weighted bat outside the batter’s box while Vic Lombardi finished his warmups. Cash walked back to the runway.
“Guy right back of the right-hand end of the dugout,” Cash said. “Short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt,” Cash said. “Brown paper bag. Eating a sandwich.”
Keeping his back toward the third-base line where Boucicault sat with Lauren, Burke studied the man, before he stepped back into the runway.
“Paper bag’s big enough,” Burke said.
Cash nodded.
“And he’s at the right end of the dugout,” Cash said. “Robinson coming in from first.”
“Any other prospects?”
“Half a dozen guys with loose shirts, or sport coats. But I like the Hawaiian shirt. Most people don’t bring their lunch to the ballpark. No dogs? No beer? Perfect position?”
Burke nodded. They were quiet.
“Guy in the white coat,” Cash said. “Got a perfect seat to watch.”
“That would be his style,” Burke said.
“The ball goes up,” Cash said, “you want me to shoot him, too?”
“Not if you don’t have to.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll stay here,” Burke said. “You go down toward right field a way. Something happens we’ll have a crossfire going.”
“How about civilians,” Cash said.
“I’m going to keep Jackie alive,” Burke said.
“Even if it costs a couple civilians?”
“If it has to,” Burke said, “it has to.”
Cash smiled faintly and turned and stepped out of the runway and strolled along the aisle toward right field, to the next runway, and stopped there and leaned on the wall to watch the action.
It came in the fourth inning. With Billy Cox on first and two out, Frank Gustine doubled into the left field corner. Cox stopped at third. The next batter, Ralph Kiner, hit the ball to the deepest part of left-center field. Carl Furillo, playing center, caught the ball with his back to home plate, and banged into the Van Heusen shirt sign and held the ball. Hilda rang her cowbell. The fans stood and cheered and clapped and whistled as Furillo trotted in. Burke stepped out of his concealment in the runway with his gun out and cocked and held behind his right thigh. Jackie came to the bench. Among the rest of the fans applauding Furillo, the man in the Hawaiian shirt took something from his lunch bag and extended his arm. Burke shot him twice in the middle of the back. As he fired, he heard Cash’s gun from off to his right. Blood appeared on the man’s face. He half turned and fell onto the roof of the Dodgers dugout. Most of the fans didn’t notice. Those around him stood frozen for a moment. Burke put his gun away and turned and walked back down the aisle where he’d stood. He walked under the stands and past the concession booths and out through the rotunda, and left onto Sullivan Place. Cash fell in beside him and they walked to the parking lot on Bedford Avenue where Burke had left his car.
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