Meanwhile, a fake hippie was sticking a switchblade tip into each of two plastic-wrapped not-bread loaves, coming back with white powder, which he tasted and approved.
NINE
After the event, the tired but exhilarated staffers climbed on the bus and were taken to downtown DeKalb and dumped, with rides back scheduled at eleven and midnight. The farm community had a fairly lively main drag, with restaurants, bars, clubs and a movie with a nine o’clock show.
Ruth and I wound up at the Pizza Villa. On a Saturday night, this very old-fashioned red-and-white-checked-tablecloth joint was bustling and we waited half an hour for seating, and another half hour for the pie. We covered a lot of topics along the way.
Waiting on a bench, marinara sauce in our nostrils, “O Sole Mio” (Connie Francis) in our ears, I asked Ruth innocently, “Where does the Reverend get his funding?”
She shrugged. She was still in that zebra-print dress and looked fantastic. “Well, he’s paid for his speaking engagements, in most cases. There are donations, of course, including some from very wealthy people, black and white. He’s written three books that generate considerable royalties. And, of course, most of the staff is unpaid.”
“How do these kids afford that?”
“The normal Coalition staff is much smaller—this is a political campaign, remember. How can they afford it? Well, the white ones, frankly, have parents who fund their airy-fairy activities, despite not agreeing with them. Thank God for unconditionally loving parents.”
Not how I’d describe mine.
“What about the others?”
“You mean the black ones? Some are recent grads who haven’t found meaningful paying work yet. You’ll notice many only work half-days, because they have other jobs. Some have taken leaves of absence from work and tap into their savings. We have several substitute teachers among us, and accountants and—”
“Well-educated people.”
“That’s right. We’re fussy about who we take on.”
Not that fussy. I was here.
She was saying, “I’m sure you know why the Reverend insists on suits for the men and fairly conservative clothing for the women, at headquarters. We have to put a good face on who and what we are.”
“How many staffers are actually paid?”
“Myself, Raymond’s, uh…the Reverend’s driver, and his two personal assistants—”
“You mean bodyguards.”
She shrugged, nodded. “Yes. Death threats, like I told you. And of course Mr. Jackson, Harold, who is quite a public speaker himself, which is another source of income. There’s Monique, who’s really skilled secretarially…” Her dark eyes saddened. “We used to be such good friends.”
Monique was almost as attractive as Ruth, a short, shapely girl in her twenties who had not gone the Afro route, sticking more with a Ronnie Spector look.
“What happened between you two?” I asked.
“You know.”
“The…fling?”
A shrug, a nod. “She hasn’t spoken to me in weeks.”
I wondered if Monique had had her own fling with the boss, but didn’t offer up the possibility for discussion.
“And I’m stuck rooming with her here,” she said with a sigh. “A roommate who stays mute till she goes to sleep, and then her lousy snoring keeps me up half the night.”
“Well, I have a room to myself. There’s a couch.”
“I couldn’t impose.”
“Right, a terrible imposition, sharing a room with a lovely woman like you.”
She tilted her head. Narrowed her eyes. “It would have to be strictly two staffers just sharing a room. Nothing else. Nothing more.”
“You can trust me. The Coalition is very fussy about who they put on staff, you know.”
Her chin raised and she studied me. “Do you snore?”
“No complaints so far.”
“…We’ll see.”
A waiter finally ushered us to a booth. Some piped-in asshole was singing “Funiculi, Funicula.” Come back, Connie, come back.
At least the pizza was good, very crisp, lots of sauce, not too much cheese, some zing to the pepperoni.
“So,” I asked her, “what’s your training?”
“I’m a legal secretary.”
“No wonder they have to pay you. A degree like that takes money.”
“Usually. But I don’t come from money. My father I never met, my mother is on welfare, and my two younger sisters, by another long-gone daddy, are still in high school. I won’t kid you. It’s a struggle.”
“But you went to college?”
She bit off the end of a pizza slice and nodded. Chewed, swallowed, said, “I was always a good student.”
“You must have been some kind of genius.”
“Well…I did get a full-ride scholarship at Washington.”
“What Washington? State, D.C…?”
“Washington University. Back in St. Louis. Lived there all my life.”
“And are still there, I see.”
“Still there.” Another bite. More chewing followed by a swallow. She licked sauce off her upper lip. “And still living with my mom and my sisters.”
“That must be nice. To be able to get them into better circumstances.”
Her smile was saucy, in several senses. “Not really. We still live in Pruitt-Igoe.”
“What’s that?”
Her smile was amazed. “Never heard of it? But then you’re an Idaho boy.”
Actually Ohio, but she wasn’t to know that.
I said, “So it’s some kind of slum?”
A smirk, a nod. “A housing project in the ’50s that just went almost immediately to shit. Crime-ridden, poorer than poor. A war zone. They’re demolishing a lot of the buildings right now.”
“Good thing you’re out of town.”
That made her laugh. “Well, there are…or were… something like thirty-three buildings. But there have always been pockets of that nasty place that weren’t so bad. Floors where the tenants knew each other, where there were a limited number of families, who took pride in maintaining their apartments. Who lobbied for playgrounds and gardens. But it’s coming to an end, bad and good. The buildings will all be down before you know it.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll have to find better-paying work than the Coalition can afford, that’s for sure. But not till after the election.”
“That won’t be long.” Nibbled crust. “You really think McGovern can win?”
Her eyes flashed and so did her smile. “Oh, I know he can. The Republicans are underestimating all these new young voters, who fought so hard against Vietnam.”
Who fought so hard against going to Vietnam was more like it.
We caught the eleven o’clock bus back and stopped at Ruth’s room, which was on the ninth floor, and picked up her overnight bag and train case. Monique wasn’t back yet, so Ruth left a note.
On the elevator, I asked her, “What did you write to your roomie?”
“Just that I found somewhere else to sleep tonight. She’ll know it’s you. Everybody’s seen we’re friendly.”
“Is that what we are? So what’s the upshot?”
“Upshot is I’ll be called an even bigger slut.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I won’t be with them that long. Most will be gone as soon as the election’s over.”
“Like you.”
“Like me.”
I let her into my room and she had a look around. At the double bed with the floral spread, the couple of campus landscapes on the wall, the dresser, the little table, the drab green carpet, the blah beige walls. Her suitcase stayed in her hand.
“You said you had a couch,” she said. “Where is it?”
“I must have been thinking about my apartment.”
A dark-chocolate eyebrow arched in the milk-chocolate face. “Really? You were just confused?”
“I get that way sometimes. No problem. You can share the bed with me. It
’s a double.”
“You mean, they’re all going to say I’m a slut anyway, so what’s the harm?”
“Now that you mention it.”
Amusement wrestled with irritation on her pretty face. Then she willed it blank and set the suitcase down and walked right up to me. Locked eyes with me.
“We’ll share the bed, Jack, but you will stay on your side and I will stay on mine.”
“Absolutely,” I said, and kissed those sticky red lips.
She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I’d say she cooperated fully. She stepped back, gave me an appraising look, and out of nowhere said, “I’m taking a shower. Alone.”
“I could stay on my side, and you could stay on—”
She reached up with two hands and lifted the Afro off. Fucker was a wig! But initial shock past, I noticed she looked every bit as pretty with her cropped-to-the-skull actual hair, which added to the hoop earrings gave her a more African look.
“You could probably use a shower yourself,” she said, resting the wig on the dresser. She took off the earrings, too. “It’s been a very long day.”
“It has,” I said.
“I won’t use all the towels.”
“Thoughtful you.”
She’d been in the stall five minutes when I joined her in there, naked as she was, and asked for the soap over the noisy spray. She wasn’t mad at all. Didn’t even pretend to be. We washed each other, soaping each other’s backs and fronts, among other things, leaving the faces to their owners but little else. No kissing, no fondling. Just getting squeaky clean.
Without platform shoes, she was a good three inches shorter than me, slender with cupcake breasts riding high on her rib cage, tilted up impertinently, her pubic thatch trimmed back, like the hair on her head. That tight, firm flesh pearled with water might have been a sculptor’s masterpiece left out in the rain.
Gentleman that I am, I let her exit the stall first. We both toweled off. It was all very proper, except for my raging hard-on. After exiting the bathroom, I switched off the overhead light but left the nightstand one on.
Naked, I sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay if I take this side? I have trouble sleeping on the left side for some reason.”
Her response was interesting. What you’d call non-verbal.
She knelt before me and starting sucking me. She was gentle but thorough, taking me to the edge of a cliff where I wanted to jump. Then she looked up at me, no makeup, no lip gloss, and I bent down to kiss her perfect face, her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, while my hands glided over supple smoothness.
Then she drew away, rose and walked around the bed, elegantly, like a fashion model on a runway who forgot her frock. She lay down on the bed with her knees up, her legs long and sleek and just slightly spread, a sideways slice of pink peeking out of her close-cropped bush.
“I’ll take this side,” she said.
I was on her and in her in a moment, no talk of rubbers or the pill or was this too risky, just two people who had to make love right now, had to merge into one, moving slowly, and then not so slowly, pumping, thrusting, trying to find my way ever deeper inside of her, as she worked to let me in, building to something outside of time or practical concern.
When I finally eased off her, she got up and moved gracefully back into the bathroom. With considerably less grace, I used the Kleenex box on the nightstand. She returned in sheer panties and got her cigarettes out of her purse. She stood at the window, where the drapes were as sheer as her panties, and she smoked, looking out.
“Help yourself,” she said softly, meaning the Cools that she had left on the nightstand.
“I never got the habit.”
Her lovely long back was still to me. “Oh? Any bad habits at all, Jack?”
“Nope. I rarely drink to excess. I don’t overeat, despite what you witnessed at the Pizza Villa. And I especially don’t engage in unprotected sex with strange women.”
Now she glanced over her shoulder and gave me that saucy smile again, minus the sauce this time. Then she returned to looking out through the sheer curtains, at nothing, or at least that was what I sensed.
“Jack, tonight when we were telling each other about ourselves,” she said, and of course mostly it had been about her, by my design, “there’s something I didn’t mention.”
“Oh?”
“I was married once.”
“Oh.”
“No kids. Didn’t last long. Didn’t know him well, though I wished I could have. I met him one weekend at a church dance and he was going overseas in a few weeks. Back to Vietnam. We saw a lot of each other while he was on leave. Then on impulse we flew to Vegas and got married and had two days of honeymoon and he was gone.”
He died over there.
“He died over there, Jack. I’ve never quite been the same. That’s why I’m so against the war, Jack. That’s why I want McGovern to win so bad.”
She came to bed after a while and turned her back to me again. Lights were off.
I said, “I was married. Wartime thing. Similar conditions. But I didn’t die over there, not so’s you’d notice. Whirlwind romance, like yours. But then I came home and found her in bed with a guy…and the marriage died, even if I didn’t.”
And the next day I went around to talk to the bastard, found him working under his little sports car and I kicked out the jack. Well, he’d called me a bunghole. Now he was deader than my marriage.
She turned over onto her side and looked at me with pity, which I didn’t mind actually, because understanding was in there, too.
But they wound up letting me walk, and the Broker saw the story in the papers and came looking me up….
“Jack…I guess we both have our war wounds, don’t we?”
She went to sleep in my arms. Of course, before long we were facing the other way from each other. That was okay. She snored a little.
TEN
Sunday evening, around six, the blue-and-silver bus that had been born the same year as me let us all out at Coalition Headquarters on East Euclid. Staffers and their overnight bags headed in all directions for cars that had been parked on side streets where parking meters weren’t an issue. Neon signs for bars and restaurants had that nice glow you only get at dusk and I asked Ruth if she’d like to grab a bite.
“Love to,” she said, suitcase in one hand and train case in the other.
We’d spent a long day, mostly on the bus, with a non-Nimoy event at the state teacher’s college in Kirksville. Light attendance compared to yesterday and a disappointment, though the Reverend’s rousing speech got great response. If you’re wondering, André had done no business this afternoon, at least not that I caught him at.
“I’ve eaten breakfast at Duff’s,” I said to her. “I wonder if it’s as good at night? Or if they’re even open.”
She was smiling and nodding, and now I realized some of the Afro bounce was due to its being a wig. “They’re open and very good—such a cool funky place. The Croque Monsieur is to die for.”
“What’s that?”
“A kind of grilled cheese and ham sandwich.”
“I’ll try it, but I won’t give my life for it. What about this luggage? We don’t want to lug it there.”
“I have a key,” she said, nodding toward the HQ entry. “I can leave mine inside. Yours, too, if you like.”
“No,” I said, “I’m parked a couple blocks down,” nodding across the street. I didn’t want her to know I was living so nearby, not at the YMCA, which was the address I’d supplied the Coalition. “You slip yours inside and I’ll walk down and put mine in my car trunk.”
That seemed an acceptable plan to her, and she was letting herself in as I walked across the street with my suitcase. Around the corner, I went down the alley, where my Impala SS was parked. For several seconds, I just stood there like a guy on a railway platform who missed his train.
A yellow late ’60s Dodge Charger—well-maintained, nice and clean—was next to the Impala
on the graveled, slightly sloping parking area behind our building. Far as I knew, now that my little redheaded waitress had moved on, the third-floor apartment was vacant. So this did not seem to be a new neighbor.
Whoever he or she was—no, he…that Dodge Charger was a guy’s ride—the vehicle told me something about the owner. Well, not the vehicle so much as the mint-green “Heart of Dixie” Alabama license plates and the Confederate flag decal on the back window.
I unlocked the Impala trunk and shut the suitcase in there.
Ruth was waiting patiently in the recess of the HQ doorway. The bus was gone and so were any other staffers.
“Honey,” I said, “I’m sorry. I just remembered I promised somebody I’d do something tonight.”
“Oh…well, sure.” She seemed justifiably hurt by that lame excuse, but I didn’t dare be any more specific.
I asked her, “Do you have a car?”
“Sure.”
“Rain check?”
“You bet.” But the sticky-red smile was strained.
I gave her a kiss on the cheek, said I was sorry, and hustled across the street.
At the Impala, I opened the trunk back up and got in my suitcase, taking out the nine millimeter, which I’d folded up in some sportshirts. The noise suppressor, a black tube a little longer than the gun itself, had gotten an undignified wrapping up in my dirty underwear; I screwed it onto the Browning barrel.
Above the weathered wood of the second-floor deck, the kitchen lights were off. Nothing suspicious about that. Nothing suspicious except that Charger, which I wished was away down south in Dixie. Away, away.
I transferred the silenced weapon to my left hand and held it to my side. Went up the back stairs as quietly as I could—the boards had creaked since the day they were hammered together and tonight was no exception—and crossed the deck to the back door. The key I worked as gently as possible, but of course it made its little click.
I paused, as I dropped the key in my windbreaker pocket, looking through the door’s double glass panes across the darkened kitchen, to see if anyone would emerge. Emerge as in charge the fuck in there with a gun blasting or anyway raised to do so.
Quarry in the Black Page 9