Also, nobody here was any kind of receptionist. I felt more like I’d wandered into a newsroom or maybe a horse-betting parlor. I saw the occasional eyes flick my way as a staffer passed on, headed to deal with something more important than a walk-in in fucking Hush Puppies.
Finally a young woman—twenty-five?—at a desk to my left hung up the phone and glanced at me. She had a full Afro that Angela Davis might have envied, big hoop earrings swinging out from under, with a maroon vest and matching pants, a navy-blue pointy-collar blouse beneath.
“Yes?” she said, as if I’d asked a question.
I stood before her like a naughty student at the teacher’s desk with no apple in hand. “I’d like to apply.”
A smile twitched on lips glossed dark red. Her skin was a rich caramel but her features were rather Caucasian, as if one parent had been from Nigeria and the other from Denmark. Her eyes were big and dark, her eye shadow dark too, the long lashes real. Or anyway real enough to fool me.
“Why?” she said coolly. “Did someone tell you we were hiring?”
“Sorry. I meant to say ‘volunteer.’ ”
Eyebrows that were already arching arched some more. “Do I look like a recruiting sergeant?”
“No, you do not look like a recruiting sergeant. So then, you’re a volunteer?”
My tone had been innocent—that took some effort I admit—and she was a little thrown.
She said, “No, actually I’m paid staff.”
“Does it pay well?”
“…uh, not particularly.”
“Makes sense.”
The dark eyes flared. “It does?”
“Yeah. It never pays that well.”
“What?”
“Humiliating people.”
And I gave her a nice big smile, and a quick salute. “I’ll just be going…”
“No! Excuse me. Sorry! Young man!”
I was already out on the sidewalk. But I was waiting, zipping up my windbreaker to make it look like I was doing something.
Then she was at my side. She was as tall as I was. Or anyway in those platform shoes she was.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said, and sounded sincere enough.
“I’m not any younger than you.”
“Huh?”
“You said, ‘Young man.’ Actually, you said, ‘Young man!’ Kind of like my third-grade teacher, who you remind me of a little, only her big hair was gray.”
She just stared at me, like I’d thrown cold water in her face.
Then she started to laugh. Hard enough that she grabbed onto my sleeve. I am one fucking charmer.
Then, her laughter gone, replaced by mild embarrassment, she let go of my sleeve but stood fairly close. She had on a perfume I never smelled before, and it was nice. Spicy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re very busy right now, a lot going on, and I…didn’t meant to be rude.”
“No problem.”
“Thank you. Shall we start over?”
“Why don’t we skip the pleasantries and go right to where you sit at your desk and I sit in that empty chair alongside it, and you ask me all about myself?”
So we did that.
I told her my name was John Blake and that I’d been stateside for about two years following three tours in Vietnam, where I’d won the Bronze Star. That I’d joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and participated in lots of demonstrations, everything from small protests to Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal).
“I was never a paid staffer,” I told her. “Just another grunt. I inherited my folks’ farm in Idaho and sold it, so I’m still fairly flush. I can afford to indulge my conscience for a while.”
She was nodding, listening intently, really buying in. “Why did you leave VVAW?”
I shrugged. “Membership is shrinking. With the Paris Peace Talks and all, a lot of guys figured they’d made their point, and booked it. Felt we’d won the peace in a war that didn’t give us many victories.”
“And what brought you to us?”
“I’m an admirer of Reverend Lloyd. And when I heard he was out drumming up votes for George McGovern, well, hell…I figured, I’m in.”
“Staunch McGovern man?”
The only reason I would have voted for McGovern, if I bothered voting (which I never did), was that any asshole off the street would be better than Tricky Dick.
“Oh yes,” I said. “He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, you know. He’s no pacifist. He understands military men, and knows how badly we were used.”
She’d been taking some notes with a pencil on a yellow pad, but now she was tapping the eraser end on the desktop, studying me like a menu item that sounded too good to be true. But she was hungry enough to take a chance.
“Mr. Blake,” she said, starting to rise, “could you wait here a moment?”
“Sure. And it’s Jack.”
She smiled. My God, she was lovely. Like a Swedish girl dipped in milk chocolate. Down boy.
“And I’m Ruth. Ruth Wright.”
“Hi Ruth.”
“Hello, Jack.”
She went off and I made a point of not checking out her ass, wanting to make a good impression. Just the same, I felt eyes come up for momentary appraisals, the suspicion in here like the heat up a notch too high. Funny thing, none of those skeptical glances came from the black staffers, only the white ones. Scratch a hippie and find a selfish spoiled brat, I always say. Well, not out loud.
One black staffer was a little older, mid-thirties anyway. He was tall, skinny, pockmarked. He was drifting around the room, either loafing or supervising. It’s hard to tell the difference.
Then Ruth was walking briskly toward me down the central aisle between desks—which otherwise were arranged in a scattered way, since being uptight was a sin—and she was beaming.
“Would you walk this way?” she asked.
I’ll skip the talcum powder joke because she didn’t have a hip-swaying stride, just a confident one.
I followed her back to the glassed-in offices. We stopped outside the one at left, but didn’t go right in. In the short time it had taken her to collect me, the man behind the desk—gray metal and new-looking—had taken a phone call. He was sturdy-looking, ebony-skinned and cueball bald, head shaved maybe, Isaac Hayes-style. His oval face was home to heavy eyebrows over wide-set eyes, a flat-bridged nose bulging at the tip, and a rather small mouth dominated by a thick mustache. His off-the-rack suit was black and so was his tie.
While we waited, I glanced at the office at right, and there he was, at his own new gray-metal desk, hunkered over reading a typewritten page from a stack of them. He was one handsome son of a bitch, with a very short Afro and mahogany skin that suited the strong, carved features of his face. His suit and tie were black too, but his was a tailored number, and the neckwear was silk.
Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd.
Meanwhile back where I was cooling my heels, the bald bigwig (that doesn’t sound right, somehow) behind glass was hanging up the phone with one hand and motioning us to come in with the other.
I held the door open for my attractive escort, shut the door behind us, and the almost burly man behind the desk rose and grinned as big as his little mouth would allow, stretching a hand across the desk for me to shake. I did. He had a no-nonsense grip, fleshy but strong.
“Mr. Blake,” he said, in a resonant bass, sitting back down, “a pleasure. I’m Harold Jackson. The Reverend’s chief administrative assistant.”
That translated to “secretary,” but I didn’t point it out.
“Mr. Jackson,” I said with a nod.
We sat, too.
“Ruth has filled me in,” he said. “And I have to say you bring impressive credentials.”
“I do?” The only physical credentials I brought were my fake driver’s license and a phony V.A. hospital card.
He nodded, still smiling, his manner very pleasant. “You fill a specific need in this campaign…and t
hat’s what it is, a campaign to put an anti-war candidate in the White House.”
“Mr. Jackson,” I said, “do you really think that’s possible? Or are we tilting at windmills? Don’t the polls have Nixon way ahead?”
He was already nodding. “They do. But the college crowd, and others in that freshly enfranchised voting bloc of under-twenty-one-year-olds, can defy every prediction, every statistician. We could be looking at the biggest upset since Truman beat Dewey.”
I nodded knowingly. Well, I’d seen the picture of Truman holding up a newspaper saying the other guy won, hadn’t I?
“What can I do?” I asked. “Understand I’m not asking for any responsibility, walking in off the street like this. Make a gofer out of me. I can run errands as well as the next schlub.”
But again he was shaking his head before I’d finished, the fluorescent lighting above him reflecting off the top of his skull, damn near making me wince.
He said, “Mr. Blake, you’re too valuable a resource for that kind of thing. Man, you’re a war hero. A Bronze Star! That’s really something.”
“I didn’t think war was very popular around here.”
“Not real popular, no. But war heroes who come back and take a stand against that Asian debacle, they are in short supply.”
“Oh. That’s the specific need that I fill.”
Ruth, who was sitting forward and staring at me through all this, very admiringly, said, “Have you done any public speaking?”
“No,” I said. “Not my strong suit.”
That was the last thing I needed—making a speech at a Lloyd rally and getting my picture taken. In the papers, maybe!
She was saying, “I can help you. We can develop the speech together, something very short and to the point. Nice and punchy.”
“Now, Ruth,” Jackson said, frowning, “let’s not scare our young friend off on his first day.”
She shrugged, glancing from me to him and back again. “Well, even if we just introduce him to the crowd, from the front row of the audience…or perhaps he could be up on the dais with the Reverend.”
“No,” I said, “that kind of thing freaks me out.”
Again, a photo opportunity I did not need.
“But, Jack,” she said, “it would have such great impact if—”
“You’re going to college campuses,” I said. “All they’ll hear is Vietnam vet and Bronze Star and the boos and ‘baby killer’s will start. It’ll backfire. Trust me.”
This time Jackson was nodding before I finished, coming in with, “I agree with Mr. Blake.”
“Make it ‘Jack,’ ” I said.
“Jack it is,” he said with his big small smile.
But he didn’t instruct me to call him Harold or Harry, either.
“Now here’s how we’ll use you,” Jackson said, his bass going into a commanding mode, “if you’re agreeable, sir.”
“Not ‘sir,’ ” I said, grinning. “I’m an enlisted man.”
That got a booming laugh out of him. Ruth managed a strained smile.
What he had in mind was putting me to work at the phones. Ruth and I would come up with canned material that had me introducing myself as a Vietnam vet campaigning for the anti-war McGovern. We’d work that up this afternoon and I’d start in later today or tomorrow. I said that sounded fine.
They can’t take your picture on the phone.
“Also,” he said, “you will travel with us to these college campuses in the coming days. You’ll be in the audience, and the Reverend—assuming he agrees with this tactic—will mention you. Will talk up your presence and gesture to the audience, and everybody will applaud. But you won’t come forward or acknowledge it.”
“The Reverend might get booed off the stage for it,” I said.
Ruth smiled. “Nobody boos the Reverend.”
“Should you happen to spot someone in the audience,” Jackson said, “who you can identify as a Vietnam vet…are there ways?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “Clothing, usually. Sometimes a placard. You know.”
“Well, in that case you go up to them, identify yourself and shake hands and go, ‘Right on, brother.’ That cool with you, Jack?”
“Cool, Mr. Jackson.”
We talked for another fifteen minutes, and just before Ruth and I went out to get started on developing my phone spiel, Jackson said, “We’ll get you some quality time with the Reverend. I think he’s going to take to you, Jack. Take to you just fine.”
I said, “Thank you, sir.”
“No ‘sir’ necessary.” He lifted the big mustache with a small half-smile. “I was an enlisted man myself. Korea.”
As we exited the office, I heard muffled arguing across the way. A very handsome black woman in a fall coat and hat was standing in front of Lloyd’s desk, leaning toward him, gloved hands on the desktop. Now and then she thrust a finger out at the bullpen of staffers. He wasn’t saying much, though I had a hunch when he did, it was, “Now, dear…” You couldn’t pick out what she was saying, but you didn’t have to.
She was pissed.
“What’s that all about?” I asked Ruth.
“That’s Mrs. Lloyd,” she said. “Marianne.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
She shook her head. “Don’t ask. Please don’t ask.”
But there was an interesting quaver to her voice.
FIVE
A different band was on stage at the Euclid Bar and Grill, a better one. Right now they were playing “Down by the River,” a nice job of it, though I could have done without the lead singer’s over-the-top Neil Young impression. It was closing time—two A.M., according to the bar clock, really one-forty.
I’d spent the afternoon working out my phone spiel with Ruth, which had taken about an hour, the rest of the time at a desk making calls, going through a list of registered Democratic voters. A lot of the time nobody was home, but those who were—usually housewives or college kids in apartments—were mostly friendly. A handful just hung up on me. A few insisted Nixon was getting out of Vietnam, and I pointed out it was taking him better than his four years in office getting that done, reminding them he’d got elected on his “secret plan” to get out of the Nam soup. A plan, yes, but the secret was four more years of war. And now he wanted four more years in the White House.
The whole Nixon thing actually came out of my brain, astounding me. I guess I knew more about what was going on than I thought I did. Thanks, John Chancellor. And here I’d thought the NBC nightly news was just background noise while I ate something off a TV tray.
I’d arranged to pick Becky up at the bar after she got off work, then spent the earlier evening watching television with Boyd. I picked up a pepperoni pizza at a place called Culpepper’s and we were eating slices off napkins—no TV trays—while The Odd Couple was on.
He grinned at me during one commercial. “I’m starting to feel like we’re the Odd Couple.”
“Me, too. You be the ‘odd.’ ”
Remarks like that usually made him laugh. This time his half-hearted “ha” barely qualified.
Next commercial, he said, “You’re going out with that little jig-hating twat, huh?”
“Yeah. I want to see what’s she up to. Also maybe fuck her again.”
“Well, at least you have a plan.”
Me and Nixon.
After Johnny Carson, I’d gone down to the bar and found a place to stand and lean. No booth tonight—it was more crowded than last night, chatter, laughter, packed dance floor. I went wild and had a draw Falstaff. I was in the same clothes I’d worn earlier, when I volunteered at the Coalition HQ, including the windbreaker. The only change in my wardrobe was the nine millimeter in my waistband in back.
I’d brought it along for two reasons. First, those knuckleheads from last night might be back to get even, and of course all they’d get was more of the same. Second, I wasn’t sure what to make of Becky, beyond her bedroom skills, and till I found out what she was up to, I neede
d something hard and long in my pants that wasn’t doing my thinking for me.
Now and then she would stop and say something cute or sexy and go on about her business. The smokiness and neon lighting gave a guy alone at the bar a nice anonymity. Shocking as it seems, no girl hit on me. I just drank my beer—well, actually two of them—and mostly enjoyed the band. After they played “Ohio,” about the college kids getting killed by the National Guard, a bunch of applause rang out. I assumed these kids weren’t applauding the Guard, but in this town who could say.
By a quarter after two (really five till), the patrons had filed out, and the trio of waitresses had cleaned up—tabletops wiped down, chairs on tables—and cashed out with the bartender. Becky came over and looped her arm in mine. Beaming up at me as we stepped out onto the sidewalk. Cool night but not quite cold.
“Shall we?” she asked, leading me to the door between hippie dress shop and bar.
I paused. “Isn’t there somewhere after-hours I can take you? If not a club, Denny’s, or a Sambo’s maybe?”
She shook her head and all that red cotton candy bounced, her hand on the door handle. “No thanks, honey, I’m too sweaty and smoky for that. But I could fix us a little somethin’.”
“Haven’t you done enough waiting on people for one night?”
“I don’t mind. I’ll take a shower and wash the crud off, and then maybe, I don’t know…maybe see what comes up?”
I laughed like I hadn’t heard that a thousand times and followed her up the stairs, not pausing at all on the little landing at the door to the stakeout pad. Up on her landing, she used her key and I followed her in and they jumped me.
Two of them, a tall skinny one and a tall not-skinny one, one on either side, grabbing me by the arms and hauling me in, then hurling me to the carpet. I rolled over and looked up at them.
They were in tan workshirts, tan chinos and brown work boots; short hair, no sideburns. Blank oval faces, though the skinny one’s was more narrow, his hair dark brown, while the other guy, who might have been a linebacker, had a Kirk Douglas cleft chin and the blond hair to go with it.
Neither one had a gun, but the linebacker had a blackjack in his right hand, having grabbed me with his left. Now he was tapping it against his leg, gently.
Quarry in the Black Page 5