The Incident at Naha

by M. J. Bosse

  That imaginary phone call was such a groove that I felt steadier when I left the store. Ahead was Virgil’s apartment house. I walked past it about a half a block, then turned quickly, and when I saw nobody suspicious on the street, I doubled back and went in.

  Ever since my encounter with Mr. Carrigan I had glanced kind of fearfully at the super’s apartment whenever I came into the building. This time I saw Mrs. Carrigan, a sneaky little woman, slip into their place. She glanced over a hunched shoulder as she disappeared inside. For an instant I saw her eyes, a gray one looking that way and a gray one looking this way, and as I climbed the stairs toward Virgil’s floor, I imagined the Carrigans at home: Missus watched TV with one gray eye and with the other kept tabs on Mister where he sat drinking beer and furiously smoking his pipe.

  Furiously smoking his pipe.

  I got stuck on that image of Mr. Carrigan smoking his pipe. I halted on the stairway and imagined him turning toward her and jabbing the pipe in the air in the direction of the space between her eyes, using the smoking thing to emphasize some nasty point he was making. He had sawed and hammered with that Bulldog when I’d had my confrontation with him; he had almost jabbed me with its saddle bit.

  Mr. Carrigan had a pipe.

  When I knocked on Virgil’s door, he opened it first with the chain on. When he let me in, I walked straight over to the desk, turned suddenly and dramatically like Bette Davis, and announced proudly, “Mr. Carrigan has a pipe!”

  Virgil, looking startled, put down his own.

  “Mr. Carrigan has a pipe,” I repeated. “He’s a pipe freak too.”

  “I never saw him smoke a pipe.”

  “Well, he smokes one now. No more dirty cigarettes for him. The day I tried to get in here when you changed the lock on me, I went to see him—”

  “Oh, my God,” Virgil said.

  “Oh, my God is right. I’ll never be the same, Anyway, he had this Bulldog in his hand, saddle bit.”

  “I see. Carrigan has acquired a pipe.”

  “Which I’m sure he didn’t buy.”

  “Of course not. He may have found it or simply taken it.”

  “Ah,” I said, “taken it.”

  “Probably the way I did.”

  “What?”

  “When I took the two pipes from Don’s rack. As super, Carrigan probably helped to pack Don’s things for shipment out to Mrs. Halliday.”

  “Think of what he must have slipped into his pockets.”

  “What he could hide—like a pipe.” Virgil had been pacing; now he stopped. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Not me. One confrontation with Carrigan is enough,” I told him.

  *

  Ten minutes later, Virgil was back in the apartment, looking a bit hassled. It didn’t surprise me that Carrigan had been difficult or that Virgil had matched him for cunning and stubbornness. Virgil explained the whole scene. Naturally Carrigan had initially denied taking a pipe from Don’s room, but when Virgil hinted at a little reward for just one look at the pipe, Carrigan opened the door a little wider and came out into the hall.

  “I found a pipe lately. You just want to look at it?”

  “I’d like to have a look at it,” Virgil said.

  “If I had it, you could look at it.”

  Virgil pulled out five dollars. Fellowship money on which he was supposed to be writing a study of fourteenth-century English politics.

  Carrigan disappeared into the apartment and returned to the door with the Bulldog.

  Virgil extended his hand.

  Carrigan pulled the pipe back to his chest. “You’ve seen it.” And reached out for the five dollars.

  Virgil pulled that back. “I want to hold it,” Virgil said.

  “You don’t need to hold it if you seen it.”

  “You can watch me, Mr. Carrigan. I just want to examine it more closely.” And Virgil thrust the five dollars into Carrigan’s free hand.

  Reluctantly, Carrigan gave Virgil the pipe. Before the little man could protest, Virgil had unscrewed the bowl from the stem and looked inside.

  “You can’t do that!” Mr. Carrigan complained, but he was physically no match at all for Virgil, who carefully examined the shank. There was no film.

  At this point, Virgil had an inspired idea. “All right, Mr. Carrigan,” he said, “where’s the other pipe?”

  “What other pipe?”

  “You took two.”

  “Not me I didn’t.”

  Virgil fished out another five dollars of Fellowship money.

  Carrigan looked and said, “What’s so important about a pipe?”

  Virgil stuffed the money into Mr. Carrigan’s hand.

  “I gave it away,” said Mr. Carrigan.”

  “To whom?”

  “Listen, I don’t have to tell you a damn thing.”

  “And I don’t have to tell the police how you rummaged through a dead man’s possessions.”

  “Bartender down the street.”

  “Which bartender, where?”

  “Jimmy at Five Star. What’s so important about a couple pipes?”

  “Mr. Carrigan,”—Virgil lifted up the Bulldog he was still holding—“was anything in this?”

  “In it?”

  “Inside the pipe.” And Virgil pointed to the shank.

  “Why should I tell you a damn thing?”

  “Because I’m willing to pay for anything you found inside it.”

  “How much?”

  “That depends on your giving me what was inside it.” Virgil handed the pipe back to Mr. Carrigan, who sort of drooped then. Virgil believed this display of despondency was sincere. Consequently, Mr. Carrigan had found nothing in the pipe that was salable.

  After this description of the scene, I said to Virgil, “What if he had found film in the pipe?”

  “I’d have offered him fifty.”

  “But you can’t afford that kind of money.”

  “And I doubt if he would have accepted it. He would have asked for much more.”

  “So?”

  “So I would have called in Norman.”

  “Who’s Norman?”

  “A brother from Harlem. Brother Norman specializes in petty theft. He’d get that film from Carrigan.”

  “You, a law-and-order man, would break and enter? Hire someone to commit a robbery?”

  “Judith,” Virgil said with mock dignity, “a law-and-order man from Harlem is quite unlike a law-and-order man from Omaha. It’s a matter of emphasis.”

  I laughed, and when I stopped laughing I told Virgil that for once he had really and truly been funny. But he wasn’t listening to my praise; he was rummaging in his desk and came up with his tobacco pouch, which meant that he was preparing to leave.

  “Where now?” I asked.

  “We’re headed for the Five Star. We have to see that bartender before Carrigan does.”

  I followed Virgil to the door. “Maybe Carrigan’s already called him.”

  “Carrigan won’t call. He’ll go personally and kill two birds with one stone.”

  “What birds?”

  “His appetite for larceny and his thirst for booze.”

  “Maybe he’s already gone there.”

  “I doubt it. When I left I knew he was watching me, so I started climbing the stairs the way he does.”

  “You mean slowly.”

  “I didn’t give him the impression I was in any hurry to get to the Five Star. And I heard the TV on in Carrigan’s apartment. A ball game. I doubt if he’s missed a televised game in years. Carrigan won’t move out of his chair until the game’s finished. Then maybe he’ll amble over to see his friend Jimmy and discuss how to get more money out of me.”

  “But we better hurry anyway, right?”

  Virgil took my hand and we were off, going down the stairs two at a time, then tiptoeing through the front hall, and then racing again once we were out of Carrigan territory.

  Out on the street, I said excitedly, “Do you realize this
will be the twelfth pipe—the last one?”

  Virgil squeezed my hand in reply, and I had trouble matching his rapid pace as we braced against a stiff wind on our way to Five Star.

  THE POT

  Five Star was the kind of bar you walk past every day for months and can’t remember. A couple of whiskey ads are set in the single dirty window; sometimes when you pass by and turn that way, you see a row of bottles glint suddenly within the darkness, and the white shirt of a man shows ghostily; that is, if you turn to look that way at all. Five Star, a rock in the daily flow of traffic. I really looked at it for the first time, thinking of the strange places that Don’s pipes had taken us. We entered and blinked in the cool interior that smelled of booze, smoke, and especially rest-room disinfectant. Virgil positioned us at the bar on stools from which we could watch the sidewalk. That way we could see Carrigan if he came along.

  The bartender didn’t seem to notice us at all, but kept peering at some article in the Post by the tiny light above the cash register. He had one of those lined faces that make you think of carrying bricks or hauling things out of car engines. Virgil waited patiently while the bartender read his paper. I could see him forming words on his large lips. When he turned to us, I liked his face, because his eyes crinkled at the edges as if everything he saw were sort of funny to him.

  And by the time we left Five Star that afternoon, I figured anyone who spent time there would have eyes crinkled at the edges.

  The bartender put down his Post and came over. Virgil ordered draft beers, lifted his hand in a wave, and called the bartender “Jimmy”—at which his eyebrows, a sandy color and very thick, arched in surprise. He drew the beers, came back with them in foaming glasses, and hesitated a moment. “Sorry, but I forgot your name,” he said to Virgil, and Virgil told him. To look at Virgil then, you would think he spent his life in bars being friendly to bartenders.

  Jimmy moved back to his Post and we sat awhile over the beaded glasses, while outside it grew dark and threatening. Only one other drinker was in the bar, an old lady with eyes close together and a huge handbag overflowing with scraps of material and pieces of newspaper. She was dressed in a kind of indeterminate gray, in a style I couldn’t recognize, and hunched over her cupped beer glass, squinting through thick lenses at a sign that said no credit. I walked past her to the jukebox, which featured a lot of German band music and Lawrence Welk, so I turned right around and walked back to my stool, hearing her mumbling as I passed.

  I had just said to Virgil, “How will you ask him?” when the old lady suddenly yelled, “Listen to me!” Jimmy lowered his Post and nodded slightly to her. “They took your job away when you didn’t have nothing to go on, not a red cent!”

  “Yes, Annie,” Jimmy said.

  “Wasn’t no union then to help you. They did what they pleased.” She swiveled her head around like an old turtle and stared at us. “You didn’t have no union then.”

  I nodded and smiled, then frowned, because the smile didn’t appeal to her. I could tell. She lowered her eyes at me, so I frowned hard, and she smiled a little. “You unnerstand?” she said. “We didn’t have nothing to go on in them days.” And then she turned away and stared again at the no credit sign, now and then rummaging in the huge handbag without taking anything out of it.

  I turned to get Virgil’s reaction to Annie, but he hadn’t been paying attention to her. He was lighting his pipe and staring with Annie-like intensity, only not at the no credit sign, but at a pipe rack sitting on the bottom row of whiskey bottles behind the bar. Eight pipes. I counted them.

  “Another beer, Jimmy!” Virgil called out in his pleasant, familiar voice. When Jimmy came back, Virgil puffed a little extra smoke into the air.

  “That smells good,” Jimmy said appreciatively, and almost instantly the two of them were launched into a discussion of Latakia and Perique and Burley and Yenidje and God knows what other kinds of tobacco. I sat there sipping the beer and hearing their voices as if from a distance—pleasant, humming, masculine voices—while outside it began thundering and a downpour broke, spattering raindrops on the sidewalk, pinging so hard I could hear them.

  Suddenly, I guess from an excess of feeling about tobacco, Jimmy the bartender braced himself with both hands on the bar and kind of reared back and recited in a booming, resonant voice of pride and power: “He who does not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven!”

  Virgil hastened to compliment him on this splendid recitation, but at that moment two shabbily dressed old men shuffled into the bar, and Jimmy moved toward them where they took seats.

  “Shit,” Virgil muttered, and that was the very first time I had ever heard him use the word. But of course he was awfully frustrated, having just guided Jimmy onto the glorious subject of tobacco, which could smoothly lead into the equally grand topic of pipes, and voilà! as the saying goes. But the genial bartender had been distracted by the new arrivals, with whom he was now talking about the sudden shower. Luckily, the old lady, who had survived preunion days and probably carried all her earthly belongings in that handbag, engaged the two men in conversation. That allowed Jimmy to return to the Post at the cash register.

  Holding his breath, like, Virgil chugalugged his beer, and after glancing at the street, where any minute now Mr. Carrigan might appear, he called out for another draft. When Jimmy came with it, Virgil said, pointing to the rack behind the bar, “I noticed your pipes.”

  “Sixteen more at home.” Jimmy said proudly.

  “Sure is easy to accumulate them, isn’t it?” Virgil said. “I bought my twenty-second yesterday.”

  Jimmy nodded in sympathy. “Once you start collecting, you’re through. I got a new one myself a few days ago.”

  “Really?” Virgil smiled, but not too eagerly. I felt that he was right on target. “Is it that sea-rock briar?”

  Just at this moment, another man came into the bar. He was huge, dressed like a construction worker, his face heavy, solemn, and florid, and when he took off the hard hat, his head was absolutely bald. He was soaking wet from the rain when he strode up to the bar and plunked down the yellow helmet. Jimmy must have seen him out of the corner of his trained bartender’s eye, because without a word he turned to the row of whiskey bottles.

  “Poo Poo,” the big man said.

  Reaching for a bottle, Jimmy replied, “Ka Ka.”

  Had I heard right? Nobody else in the bar moved a muscle. Then the huge man said, “Pee Pee,” when Jimmy set a shot glass full of whiskey in front of him. The little glass disappeared in the great paw that the man extended, and the great paw went to the large mouth and almost in the same motion came down to the bar again. There sat the glass, empty.

  “Poo Poo,” the man said, and Jimmy drew a glass of beer.

  “Pee Pee,” Jimmy said, ringing up the money that the man had placed gently upon the bar. Then the huge man lifted the beer glass and slowly tipped it up, his glistening Adam’s apple pumping up and down rhythmically until all the beer was gone.

  “Ka Ka,” the man said, and he turned and left.

  “Poo Poo,” Jimmy called after him.

  I looked at Virgil, hoping for confirmation, like, of what I had just seen and heard. I mean, had it been toilet training, secret code, or some new kind of masculine communication? Is this what went on where the older generation hung out? But Poo Poo, Ka Ka, and Pee Pee had no effect upon Virgil. He was turned off everything but his project. Virgil Jefferson was hunched over and staring at that pipe rack.

  Jimmy had gone back to the Post, so Virgil finished off his latest beer and ordered another. When Jimmy brought it, Virgil said, “Wasn’t it the sea-rock briar?” And added, when Jimmy looked puzzled, “the pipe you recently bought: wasn’t it the sea-rock briar?”

  “Oh, I didn’t buy none. A friend give me that.” Jimmy turned and swept his hand at the pipe rack.

  “You mean—” Virgil hesitated, making his choi
ce. “The Pot?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. He give it to me a couple days ago.”

  “Looks good. Does it draw well?”

  “I only tried it twice. It’s sluggish, I think.”

  “But it has a good thick bowl. I’d call him a friend who gave you that one.”

  Jimmy leaned over and put his hand to his mouth as if he were telling a dirty story. “I give him a few drinks in return.”

  “I’ll bet you gave him quite a few to balance out for that pipe,” Virgil said flatteringly. “Mind if I look?”

  Jimmy turned and instantly got the pipe. Virgil took it from him and turned it around carefully, as if it were something cooking on a spit. From down the bar the old lady began her wailing again. “We didn’t have nothing to go on in them days.” She was talking to one of the shabby men, whose answer to her shrillness was a low whisper. For some reason, it sent her into a minor fit. “Listen to me!” she cried, and Jimmy started down the bar, saying, “Another, Annie?”

  “This gentleman says he knows all about them days, but he don’t know at all. Unless”—Her voice rose hysterically—“he was for management!”

  “Annie,” said the bartender, and he shoved a full beer next to her handbag, which had toppled over and lay like a cornucopia spilling out pieces of cloth and newspaper onto the bar.

  There was a flurry for a few moments, during which the whispering man and old Annie had their say. When Jimmy had calmed them down by acting as judge, he returned to us. Virgil had the pipe apart. “It looks a little dirty,” he said to Jimmy with a smile.

  “I hadn’t run a cleaner through it yet. Should.” Jimmy took it back from Virgil, who had first screwed the bowl and stem together.

  “Well?” I said to Virgil, when Jimmy returned to the Post.