Five O'Clock Lightning

by William L. DeAndrea

  Kennedy had always found it easier to humor people than to educate them. That was how he had made his way from the Philadelphia slum in which he’d been born to the position he held now. It was how he managed Mrs. Klimber. People, all his life, had insisted on believing Gennarro Kennedy insignificant simply because of the color of his skin. He had decided early to use that, to manipulate all the fools who couldn’t see him for the man he was.

  Chicago Ned had been easy to deal with. Kennedy had simply gone out and gotten the visible trappings of power. He’d picked Lindy, who was a hopelessly incompetent waitress at the time, because she was the whitest woman he’d ever seen—the type most likely to impress Chicago Ned. Also, since Kennedy himself was quite black, the contrast appealed to him esthetically.

  In any case, it had worked like a charm; Chicago Ned cooperated, and the operation was a resounding success. Then he’d had trouble getting rid of Lindy. She loved him, she said, which had been, of course, ridiculous. Still, Kennedy understood that the girl had not known what she really meant. She was excited by him, in awe of him. She, who was so vacant and incompetent, had a desperate need for someone who was completely secure in himself.

  So Kennedy had let Lindy set herself up in this apartment at his expense—of course, it was in a section of town where his comings and goings would arouse no comment. It had turned out to be a fortunate arrangement. It gave him a place to go to escape the maternal neuroses of his “employer” and a safe headquarters from which to arrange the more covert portions of his operations.

  Besides, in an absent way, he had grown rather fond of Lindy.

  Lindy was trying to speak through her moans of pleasure. “Honey ... please ... that’s enough ... I—I can’t take it anymore ...”

  “Nonsense,” Gennarro Kennedy replied. “Relax and enjoy yourself.” Kennedy concentrated more on what he was doing, bringing Lindy once more to the heights of passion. Only then did he ease his control over himself and finish it. He rolled over, smiled, and listened to Lindy try to catch her breath. He allowed her a few minutes, then said, “Go take a shower, Lindy. I want to make a phone call.”

  “Yes, honey,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek, rose, and padded to the bathroom. As Kennedy watched her go, he wondered, not for the first time, what it must be like to be brainless and innocent like Lindy. To be so easily contented on the one hand, yet on the other never to know the intellectual ecstasy, the esthetic ecstasy, to know none of the ecstasies except the ones that came from sex.

  He sighed. It was unanswerable. His body gleamed like anthracite in the soft lamplight as he reached for the phone.

  He told the operator to get him a number in New York and waited while she did so. Finally he heard the phone ringing. It was answered on the second ring.

  “Nofsinger,” the Negro told the telephone.

  “Yes, boss. I been waiting for your call, as instructed.” Nofsinger was in charge of Klimber Enterprises’ New York “information” office. He reported directly to Kennedy. He was loyal because he was well paid and because Gennarro Kennedy knew every illegal thing Nofsinger had done in the course of his job, and could prove them all.

  “What went wrong?” Kennedy asked. His voice was very calm.

  Kennedy could hear Nofsinger swallowing on the other end of the line. The two men had never met, but Kennedy had seen pictures of his subordinate, pictures that had shown Nofsinger smiling, fat, and jolly, looking like the neighborhood grocer. Kennedy knew him to be sly, ruthless, and mean.

  And stupid. Nofsinger didn’t know Kennedy was a Negro; wouldn’t have worked for him if he had known. Kennedy wasn’t sure who infuriated him more, the pompous whites like Nofsinger—like all whites, if you wanted to tell the truth—who thought themselves superior because they lacked pigment in their skin, or the Negroes, typified by Chicago Ned, who let the whites get away with it. Who even believed the idiocy themselves.

  Kennedy felt no sympathy for the first, no kinship with the second. He was an outsider; he’d freed himself from their petty concerns. He amused himself by using the position he had created for himself to make the fools—the rich fools, the well-known fools, the powerful fools—put on Punch-and-Judy shows for him. He was the puppet master, Iago in Othello’s body. It was a life that suited him admirably. He would make a plan, then convince Mrs. Klimber the idea was hers (although the old woman’s senile vaporings were a rich source of ideas in themselves). Kennedy pulled the strings, and the fools jumped.

  Every so often, though, a plan went wrong. Gennarro Kennedy did not like it when plans went wrong.

  “What went wrong?” Kennedy asked again.

  “I don’t know, boss.” Nofsinger’s voice was practically a whine. “It was working perfectly. I set up the group, waited for a fanatic, just like you told me, to show up. I let the talk get around to violence, revenge, you know, things like that. The Rosenbergs’ getting fried in July was a big help with that part of it, just like you said.”

  “I know what I said, Nofsinger.”

  “Yes, sir. Anyway, we got the guy we wanted—a little simple, but devoted to the ‘cause’—quiet, except when we were talking about killing somebody. Gave us a name, John Thane, or something like that, but it don’t mean nothing. Nobody in a Commie group uses his real name; it’s like a tradition.”

  “Like Lenin,” Kennedy said. “Stalin. I know the tradition.” The huge black man was growing impatient. “Get on with it, Nofsinger.”

  “Yes, sir. I went through the whole thing about who should we kill, like we were all figuring it out together—something that would hit at the heart of America, and somebody said the President, and I said naw, that had been done before and had never worked, the workers were still oppressed. I said we needed to do in somebody who symbolized America, like a ball player or something.

  “That went over real good, just like you said it would. Most of the guys in the group were pale-face nothings that couldn’t play baseball if they wanted to. It was one of them who beat me to coming up with the idea of killing one of the Yankees because they won all the time, and besides they didn’t have any Negroes on their team, which proved ... Anyway, I’ve told you all this.”

  “I know you have, Nofsinger. It’s good we review. But let’s make it brief; it doesn’t pay to keep a line open too long.”

  “All right, I’ll just go over it quickly. Somebody suggested killing Stengel, but I said he was too old, but Thane came back with Mickey Mantle, him being such a big star and all. That went over great—just like you said—and everyone was crazy about the idea. I fixed the lottery about who would get to do it, went to work on Thane, and got him the gun.”

  “And you left the details up to him?”

  “That was the plan,” Nofsinger said, “wasn’t it?”

  That indeed had been the plan. Kennedy sighed inwardly. It had come to him one evening during one of Mrs. Klimber’s endless discussion sessions. At one point, when she had for the third time lamented Congressman Rex Harwood Simmons’s lack of progress with his Communists-in-sports investigation, the plan had come to him. He had been wanting to use the bogus People’s League for Social Justice for something, anyway. Nofsinger was too bourgeois to fulfill the league’s original purpose, in any case. He simply couldn’t attract the upper-class New York liberals from show business or academia, especially at a time like this. They had all run for cover, hiding from the McCarthys and the Simmonses. Nofsinger was left with no one but the fanatics, some of whom were probably actually oppressed; therefore useless because powerless.

  Very well, Gennarro Kennedy had said to himself, let us use the fanatics. Have them, or rather, the most suitable of them, kill Mickey Mantle, with a gun provided by the PLSJ. And let Nofsinger make sure the gun is traceable to the League. With all the controversy that had followed Mantle’s draft exemption, an attempt on his life would provide the imaginative Rex Simmons, perhaps the greatest fool Kennedy had ever known, with enough material to make his committee a resounding succes
s.

  The beautiful nature of the plan was revealed in this: no matter what happened, the plan would succeed. If the gunman were captured, so much the better—being a fanatic, he would undoubtedly confess, bringing a rising tide of hatred to the already swollen waters of reactionary fear. If he failed to kill Mantle, Mantle would live to face the ludicrous charges Simmons would undoubtedly have raised—that the attempt had been made to “keep the ball player from talking” or some similar nonsense. If the assassin, or would-be assassin, were to be killed or to get away, the bullets fired would lead to his gun, and the gun would lead to the League.

  There was only one way the plan could have failed. Kennedy cursed himself for not having seen it.

  “We chose the wrong fanatic, Nofsinger,” Kennedy said. He could hear the fat man’s sigh of relief when he heard the word we. Let him relax, Kennedy told himself. It was his fault, and he’ll pay for it, but for now I need him.

  “I’m sorry, boss; I don’t see how he did it. I don’t even know how the congressman came to be at the game.”

  “I want this Thane, Nofsinger.”

  “I’m looking, boss,” Nofsinger said. “But it’s not going to be easy. He must have been wearing a disguise yesterday. All the descriptions say sandy hair, square jaw. Thane hardly had a jaw at all, and his hair was sort of brown. It was our gun he used, though.”

  “Find him.” Kennedy’s voice was flat and hard. “If I have to come to New York to do it myself, I’m going to be displeased.”

  Nofsinger gulped. “Boss, there’s something else that’s going to make you displeased.”

  “Yes?”

  “I went to consult Bristow about this—you know, our tame Commie, the one we used in the Laird busi—”

  “I know who you mean. Was he any help?”

  “He wasn’t there. He’s disappeared.”

  “Disappeared.”

  “Yes, sir. Friday afternoon he left his office for a late lunch, and nobody’s seen him since. I’ve talked to his wife, his nurse; nothing.”

  “That’s very interesting, Nofsinger. Do you think it has any connection with the business at hand?”

  Nofsinger thought it over for a minute. “Don’t see how it could,” he said at last. “But it’s funny. I thought you ought to know.”

  “Very good, Nofsinger. I’ll speak to you again Tuesday.”

  He hung up.

  “Honey?” asked a timid voice.

  Kennedy turned to see Lindy standing in the bathroom doorway, her platinum hair darkened to yellow by water and steam. Behind her, the shower still ran.

  “Yes, Lindy?” Kennedy asked.

  “Honey, can I come out of the shower now? I’m getting all pruney.”

  “Yes, Lindy, you may come out now,” he said. Lindy thanked him and disappeared back into the bathroom to turn the water off.

  Gennarro Kennedy had already forgotten her. He was thinking that he didn’t like to be duped. And he was working on new plans to put things back in their proper order.

  7

  Garrett’s parents were in the living room watching Donald O’Connor wrapping up the Colgate Comedy Hour. Garrett’s mother doted on Donald O’Connor, so they watched the Colgate show anytime he was the host. Every other week it was Ed Sullivan.

  Garrett said hello, went to the kitchen and got his dinner out of the oven, and joined them.

  Garrett’s father got up and switched to WABD, where it was time for Roscoe Karns in Rocky King, Inside Detective. It was just about the only thing on the DuMont Network they ever watched.

  “How do you like that picture, Russ?” Mr. Garrett asked.

  “Looks great. New picture tube?”

  His father laughed. “Nah, turned out not to need one. I just adjusted the antenna. Must have blown off-line in the last big storm.”

  Garrett’s mother sniffed. “The damned fool was up on the roof all afternoon. I had to keep running in and out to tell him how the picture looked. Quite a show for the neighbors.”

  “You can’t argue with results, Florence.”

  “It is a great picture, Mom,” Garrett said. “I bet Donald has never looked so good before.”

  Mrs. Garrett sniffed again. “In Singing in the Rain he was in color.”

  Rocky King was underway, but it was a kinescope of an episode they’d already seen, so they kept talking.

  “One of my magazines at the shop says NBC’s gonna do a Colgate Comedy Hour in color come fall,” Mr. Garrett said.

  “In the movies?” Mrs. Garrett wanted to know.

  “No, TV. They’re working on a way to show color and black and white on the same show. If it works they’ll start selling color TVs.”

  “If nobody’s got a color TV, how will they know if it works?”

  “NBC has got some. For the test. Use your head, Florence.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him; everybody laughed.

  Russ Garrett thought about color TV. That would be great, like dreams. His dreams, anyway, though he did know some people who claimed to dream in black and white. That didn’t make much sense to Garrett—people were dreaming before there were movies, or TV, or even photographs. Where did they ever get the idea of the black and white when the human race was already in color?

  He relaxed and let his mind wander, letting the day slide off his shoulders like a heavy pack. Baseball would look great on color TV, he thought; the color of the crowd, all that green ...

  Which reminded him. “How did the Yankees do today, Dad?”

  His father looked surprised. “Weren’t you at the game?”

  “No, the cops had me out running around with them all day.”

  Garrett’s mother sniffed. His father said, “Get anywhere?” Garrett shook his head.

  “Commie bastards,” the older man grumbled.

  Garrett let it slide. “So how did they do?” he asked again.

  His father shrugged. “They won, but I’m starting to get a bad feeling about them.”

  “They’re still in first place.”

  “They’re coasting, son. Taking it easy. They fall into that kind of habit, the National League will whip their tail come October. Lightning can strike the Yanks as easily as anybody else.”

  Rocky King had wrapped up his case at nine thirty. The elder Garretts went to bed. Russ switched to CBS and watched Man Behind the Badge, followed by The Web. The Web boasted stories about “normal, everyday people who find themselves in situations beyond their control.”

  “This,” he muttered, “is the show for me.” When that was over, he switched to NBC and watched Ralph Bellamy in Man Against Crime. It was starting to irritate him how easily these TV guys solved their cases.

  Garrett watched the late news and was about halfway through The Late Show when he admitted to himself he’d put it off long enough. He was going to think about what had happened today sooner or later; he might as well get it over with.

  God, what a mess. All he’d accomplished was to set himself up for big trouble when Captain Murphy found out about his little side trip. That, and reopen a wound he’d thought had healed over.

  Garrett took the photograph from his pocket.

  He was going to look at the picture. He was going to look at the picture, and he wasn’t going to cry. And he wasn’t going to hate Annie for being so stubborn, and he wouldn’t punish himself for something beyond his control, like the show said. He wouldn’t curse his fate for being beyond his control.

  Sure he wouldn’t.

  Okay, Garrett, he told himself. Let’s take this easy. Turn the picture over. That’s it. Look at the beach, the waves, the sky. Don’t look at the people yet, especially not at Annie.

  Okay. Now look at Jenny. She’s a nice lady; she won’t hurt you. She’s pretty, too. Now look at the man. Take a good look at him. You never met him, never knew him, but he was instrumental in this whole mess. Try to get to know him from the picture. Looks sort of familiar, doesn’t he? The light-colored hair, that square jaw. Just like in t
hat police sketch ...

  Garrett looked again. “No,” he said to no one in particular. “Get out of here with this stuff.” But the picture refused to change.

  Garrett’s first impulse was to run for the phone, but he stifled it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be plenty of time to call. It would give him a chance to think. Besides, he didn’t want to wake the babies.

  8

  Garrett sat in the telephone booth for ten minutes, holding a dime in his hand and feeling sweat running like a river down his spine. Garrett had always thought he liked summer—now he realized he hated it. It was baseball that had been making his summers tolerable all these years. It was an interesting thing to find out. Of course, baseball was a warm-weather game, so you’d think if you loved baseball so much, you’d like the kind of weather it had to be played in. On the other hand ...

  Garrett was doing it again. He was sitting in a phone booth in a New Rochelle gas station, watching the Monday-morning traffic crawling into the city. Delaying his phone call.

  He was delaying it, he knew, because he shouldn’t be making it in the first place. There were other people to talk to. If he were an idealist, he would tell Vicious Aloysius Murphy about the man in the picture. If he were a pragmatist, he would tell Congressman Simmons the Second, newly appointed this morning.

  Instead, he was going to call Jenny Laird, and he didn’t know what that made him. Noble, maybe. Or a horse’s ass.

  He left the phone booth, and for a few seconds the sweltering morning air felt cool by comparison. He walked to the soda machine, where he invested a nickel in a bottle of Coke. The Pause That Refreshes, he thought.

  The trouble was, he didn’t know enough. How could he call up a widow and tell her her husband was a dead ringer—so to speak—for the guy who had murdered the man who’d driven her husband to suicide, and what do you think of that, Jenny old kid?