He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to, for her to see in his face that he knew full well he didn’t have a bright future in following the trail of obituaries to sell heat-swollen Bibles in white cardboard boxes. Those damned boxes had more than once made him think of his own coffin, and how when they locked you away in one of those and sank you six feet under it was all she wrote, brother.
“This could be the answer,” Ginger said, and it seemed her face had come closer to his. “Could be, if everything feels right. You and me…we’ll know if it’s worth a go or not when we get deeper into it.”
“I think you already are.”
“Not yet. I need you to help me cook the plan.”
He stared at the floor because he didn’t know where to set his eyes. He could hear her breathing, again as if she were up right next to his ear.
“Let’s see that badge,” she said, and he dug his wallet out and showed her. She took it over to the window, where the light was brightest, and spent a few long seconds examining it from every angle. “This on the level?”
“Supposed to be real, yeah.”
“Got a story behind it?”
“Nope. Just a hundred bucks worth of city dick badge, that’s all I know.”
“Hm. Looks real enough.” Ginger closed the wallet and gave it back. “So,” she said, with a slight upward lilt to her voice, “what do you think?”
It was a moment before he could answer, but the gears had begun turning in his own brain. Did he dare to move in a direction like this? Still…she was right. They could scotch the deal and scram if it looked like a dead end. Two hundred thousand dollars. Was it worth even going forward just a little ways? He said, “It wouldn’t be like nabbin’ the Lindbergh kid at midnight. That was a baby. Here you’ve got two brats with loud voices.”
“Sure. So we figure out how to take ’em in broad daylight, and in a way that they won’t be hollerin’ for Daddy.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Has to be a good plan,” she corrected. “But it’s a hell of a gamble, sure it is. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little weary of livin’ from hand to mouth. Tired of the grind, and I know you must be too. You and me…we’ve got talent that we ought to put together. Seems a shame to let this go…sooner or later, things bein’ as they are, somebody not near as talented as you and me are gonna try for those kids.” She paused for a moment and Pearly could see she was coming up with something from the shine of her eyes. “You know, that could be the angle.”
“What could be?”
“Put on your thinkin’ cap, mack! Maybe…if somebody else was plannin’ a snatch…” She left that hanging with one of her small and deadly smiles. When it faded away, she was all hard bricks-and-mortar. “Are you in or out?”
“Gonna kill me if I say I’m out?”
“What would you do in my place?”
“Crazy,” he muttered, but he had already sent his mind to Mexico. A hundred grand could buy an awful lot of good living south of the border. There were places a man—alone, or with a woman—could disappear into, enjoy the fruits of his labor and never look back. A hundred grand. Who ever saw that kind of money but the crooked bankers, the top-cat businessmen who were themselves as crooked as Shandy’s mile, and…well, yeah…the gamblers, like himself and Ginger LaFrance. He was standing on a beach…white sand…blue water…a fishing boat in the distance…maybe a nice stone villa up in the hills behind him…and money in a cashbox, ready to be spent on whatever else the hell he decided to buy. Then he was aware again of this room at the Hotel Clementine, the chugging of the fan as it sprayed the room with a breeze, and the woman before him who was offering him the chance at a life he had never dared to imagine. He said, “I’m in until we run against a wall…then I’m walkin’.”
“I’m real good findin’ a way either around a wall or through one,” she answered.
“That remains to be seen.”
Her eyebrows went up. “So…we’re partners in this, right? For the time bein’?”
“For the time bein’,” he echoed, still uneasily, though the sultry shores of Mexico did beckon his imagination.
She nodded. She took the metal lockbox back to the closet and put it up on the high shelf.
She rummaged under what appeared to be a blanket, and when she turned back to him again she was holding the ugly little .38 revolver that had dispatched Doctor Honeycutt from this world.
She spun the cylinder.
“Let’s celebrate,” she said.
Six.
She lied.
It had been on his mind ever since she’d told him, two days ago, and it had nearly eaten him up on the four-hundred-mile drive from Shreveport to New Orleans. He was sitting now with Ginger on one of the long wooden pew-style benches in the huge Union Station on South Rampart Street, the place smelling of cigar and cigarette smoke, the sweetish tang of the solution that was used to mop the black-and-white marble tiles on the floor, and another aroma that Pearly likened to the ozone of a passing lightning storm, which he figured might have something to do with the hustle-and-bustle of train travel or the metallic smell of the trains themselves, which pulled up on four tracks outside and sat there breathing steam like sullen bears. Two large fans stirred air up at the ceiling, voices were turned into murmurs and echoes, and metal things bumped and clanged beyond the archway that led to the tracks. Redcaps—the Negro men who helped passengers with their baggage—moved smartly back and forth in service to their job; they wore neatly-pressed dark blue uniforms with gold buttons and of course the scarlet caps on their heads, and Pearly smoked a cigarette down and thought that the Redcaps could’ve made good soldiers because they all looked like they probably slept at attention, even the one who looked old enough to have been a grandpa during the Civil War.
A speaker crackled and a man’s singsong voice announced the arrival of the Illinois Central train from Memphis, but that was not the train Pearly and Ginger waited for, so at the end of his cigarette he crushed it out in a dark brown ashtray that stood next to his knees and lit another. Something in his movements must have either irritated Ginger or brought her out of the silent reverie she’d been wearing like a shroud since they’d reached the station. She said, “You still sulkin’?”
He took his own damn time in answering. He watched a young Redcap pushing a cart stacked with half-a-dozen suitcases and behind him trailed the white gentlemen in their summer suits and their straw boaters, and the nicely-groomed silky women following behind all giggly-wiggly about travelling somewhere. Pearly considered that the economy might be in the ditch and as of yet the ditch was made of gluey mud, but thems that had dough didn’t mind heading north to cooler climes. He hoped the ones passing by and leaving the crisp scent of money in their wake died under tons of scalding iron when their trains went off the tracks, and for a moment he luxuriated in those mental images.
It was mid-August and the days were miserably hot. Pearly thought that there could be no hotter and more hellish place on earth than New Orleans when the heat locked in, the air sweltered and thickened and the Mississippi looked like it was made of a gritty brown soup that reflected the sun back in a dull glare, and to touch that liquid you might expect not to be cooled but to have the skin burned off your bones. It hadn’t been too pleasant of an experience driving in the blistering heat from Shreveport to New Orleans, not even in the black Ford Model A fourdoor Town Sedan he and Ginger had gone in together to buy with a hundred bucks of the Packard moolah. She’d explained to him that a new car—not so new, it was a 1930 model with three thousand miles on the 4-cylinder—was essential to whatever plan they came up with, and the Oakland had earned an amazing twenty bucks on trade-in so it hadn’t been a bad deal. The Ford was dent-free and looked good, and Ginger had said people judged you by the car you drove, which Pearly agreed made plenty of sense.
He shifted his position on the bench, blew a Chesterfield smoke ring into the Union’s sparkling space, and said testily, “Yeah, may
be I am.”
“Well snap out of it,” she told him after she’d looked around to see that other people weren’t sitting close enough to hear. “How old are you, not out of your diapers yet?”
“Listen,” he said into her face, and he saw the ferocity of his voice make her draw her lips back as if a hard wind had hit her cheeks. “You didn’t say anythin’ about a share. You said it was gonna be a split.”
“It won’t be a share, a split or a shit without help,” she fired back.
“I don’t know this punk! You’re just loadin’ him in here like this, what am I supposed to think?”
“You’re supposed to know that I’m doin’ what’s right for the job.” Ginger stopped speaking and waited while an older couple walked past the bench, following the reed-thin Redcap who deftly pushed a cartful of baggage. She returned her focus to Pearly and leaned toward him, into his cigarette smoke. “We need six hands. You and me, we can’t do it alone.”
“Nice that you didn’t tell me you’d wired your damn nephew before you got me into this.”
“My nephew is a reliable force,” she said. “He’s got the muscle we need. And I didn’t wire him until after I talked to you…after I’d figured out the angle. Okay, you can squawk about shares and splits all you damn please, but the plan needs Donnie.”
“My ass,” Pearly sneered.
“He’ll be a good mule,” she said, and then she reached out, plucked the Chesterfield from his fingers, inhaled and blew streams of smoke through her nostrils. “We’ll negotiate the money with him later, after everything’s settled in. Just relax, Pearly. There’ll be a time you’re glad Donnie’s here to help out, I guaran-damn-tee it.”
“I guess you spelled the whole idea out in the wire so Western Union got a fuckin’ eyeful?”
“You know better than that. Donnie was told I had an employment opportunity for him. That’s all he needed. He’ll tell my sister he’s comin’ to New Orleans for whatever reason he makes up, but he’ll make it stick.”
“Sounds like you’ve used him before.”
“’Course I have, otherwise why would I be wantin’ him here? Like I said, he’ll be a good mule.” She took another draw off the cigarette and handed it back to him with one of her stony little smiles.
“Your sister in the game too?”
“Maybe. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Anyway, leave my sister out of this, she’s got her own row to hoe.”
“You must come from a fucked-up family,” he said, as he pushed the cigarette between his teeth.
“And you didn’t?” In an instant her voice and demeanor changed; she stroked his cheek with the back of her hand and she sounded like a little girl burbling to her beau in the neighborhood ice cream soda parlor. “Ohhhhh, baby waby’s got his li’l ole feelin’s hurt ’cause big bad Ginger figured out the job needed a third…and now baby waby’s just firin’ his mouth all over the place without thinkin’ that Ginger has got his best interest in mind, too. Isn’t that the ticket, lovey dove?”
“Stop it.” He brushed her hand away, and when she returned it to stroking his cheek she giggled as if viewing his discomfort was the most entertaining comedy since the Marx Brothers stormed Freedonia in Duck Soup.
What might have turned into an ugly scene as Pearly’s blood began to boil was averted as the man with the microphone and the speaker switch announced the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroad train from Jackson was pulling in on track number two.
“There’s our boy,” Ginger said, and she gave Pearly’s cheek a final light tap. She stood up, and he did too. She put a hand on his shoulder. “You wait here while I go fetch him.”
“Why? So you can remind him not to use your real name in front of me?”
“I knew you had brains. Save ’em for later use.” She turned away from him and walked purposefully toward the archway to the tracks. Pearly started to take a step after her, but he decided not to push it; he sat down again to finish his cigarette, and he pondered the fact that anyone looking at Ginger LaFrance today, with her dulled-down hair, her lack of seductive makeup and hip sway and her conservative dark purple dress with a trim of lighter lavender, might’ve taken her for a school teacher or a librarian come to the train station to meet her elderly grandfather.
She’s good, he thought. He smoked his cigarette down and watched people moving around in the station and occasionally threw a glance over toward the archway where a hint of steam wafted into the terminal like a wandering ghost.
In another moment he saw Ginger come through alongside a young man in his early-to-mid twenties who carried a single battered brown suitcase. She was talking quietly to him, with an expression on her face of smug self-satisfaction that all was well in Ginger World. As they approached, Pearly crushed his cigarette out and stood up. The young man, who bore the name of Donnie Baines according to Ginger but that was open to question too, had a raw look about him, a sort of primitive craggy Neanderthal set to his large jutting lower jaw and the low forehead topped with a shock of reddish hair allowed to grow long while the sides of his head were shaved to the skin. He stood about five-eight, had wide shoulders and narrow hips and looked like he could brawl with the best of them; in fact his deep-set eyes under the protruding brow were already shifting left and right as if searching for a fight to throw himself into. He was certainly no dandy in his dress; he was wearing a pair of brown boots, tan trousers with darker brown patches on both knees, and a plain blue workshirt with the sleeves rolled up to display his thick, corded forearms. As the pair came nearer, Pearly saw the boy’s eyes fix on him and for an instant the message was transmitted as if through telepathy: I’ll beat your damn ass if I want to.
Pearly put a smile on his face. “So,” he said easily as they got within hearing distance, “this is Donnie!”
Donnie did not smile. He looked at Pearly’s offered hand for a second or two longer than necessary before he shook it, and then Donnie’s dark brown—nearly black—eyes bored into Pearly’s face as the grip strengthened to the point where Pearly thought his knuckles might crack, but he kept the smile fixed in place.
“How do,” said Donnie, in a voice like the Mississippi river full of grit and grime and tough old mud might’ve had, if the river could speak. In speaking he revealed a silver tooth in the front of his mouth, and Pearly thought all the other teeth looked darkened and worn down by gnawing on the thorny flesh of the other cavemen he’d fought.
“Good trip?” Ginger asked.
He shrugged, showing himself to be a man of few words.
“Hungry?”
“I can eat.”
Pearly thought all horses in the area should beware; he figured this punk could chew a nag down to the bones, and maybe chewing on bones had done the number on his teeth.
“We’ll find us a place to grab somethin’ before we head back.”
Donnie nodded. He took a long gaze up and down Ginger. “I swear you look so different,” he said. “Never would’ve recognized you.” He blinked a couple of times, as if trying to reason something out. “Okay, if you’re goin’ by Ginger, and this fella’s goin’ by Pearly, what am I goin’ by?”
“Donnie will do just fine,” she assured him.
There passed a few seconds of silence, as Donnie Baines turned his appraisal to Pearly. Then, abruptly, Donnie swung toward the exit to South Rampart Street and in the violence of his motion his suitcase collided with a passing Redcap who was pushing an empty cart across the floor. The Redcap staggered, the cart’s wheels went sideways and skreeched across the flooring, and Donnie Baines snarled, “Watch it, nigger!”
It was the thin young Redcap Pearly had seen a little while before; the kid couldn’t be much over twenty, and it would’ve only taken a hard breath from Donnie to knock his gangly frame to the floor. But the kid did something he shouldn’t; when he recovered his balance he lifted his gaze to Donnie, and though the boy’s ebony eyes were both startled and bewildered it was the wrong thing at the wrong time to t
he wrong person.
Instantly Donnie’s face bloomed nearly blood-red starting from the neck and rapidly ascending to the fiery hairline, the color seeming to set his hair hotter ablaze.
“Drop them eyes, nigger!” Donnie stormed. He balled up a fist and took a step toward what Pearly realized could bust this game before it even got started.
“Settle down, Heinz,” said Ginger, in a quiet and soothing voice, and she laid a hand not on his shoulder but across his heart as if to calm its mad progression. She stepped between him and the Redcap. “Easy, easy,” she said.
“Drop them goddamned eyes!” Donnie rasped, the old dirty river speaking. His own eyes, fierce as hell’s flames, were locked upon the hapless Redcap and he trembled as if about to brush Ginger aside and launch himself like a bullet.
And then the Redcap cast his gaze down at the floor and said in a hushed and reverential voice, “Yes suh.” He went to his cart, which had skidded a few feet away. His narrow shoulders hunched up as if expecting a blow to his back, he righted on his head the red cap that had gone a half-inch askew and pushed the cart away across the floor.
“Easy,” Ginger said, nearly whispering. “It’s over. Let it go.”
“Nigger was darin’ me to hit him!” Donnie said, way too loudly. Flecks of foam clung to his lower lip. “Knock the black shit outta that bastard!”
“It’s over,” Ginger repeated. She rubbed her hand slowly back and forth over his heart as if regulating its beating. “People are staring at us, Donnie. We don’t want that, because we don’t want any undue attention. Do we?”
Donnie didn’t answer; his body shivered, the violence within him still straining to break out.
“I think I need another fag,” Pearly said, reaching for his pack of Chesterfields. Just that comment and movement was enough to make Donnie advance a step on him with teeth gritted and the silver fang glinting because it seemed the boy needed a fight like anybody else needed to breathe. “Whoa there, Max Baer,” he said with a tight smile. “Fuck with me and I’ll blow your head off.”
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