Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

by William Kennedy

  “Vadge,” George said.

  “That’s my word,” Vivian said. “I invented it for Eddie. I never say it anymore. I haven’t said it in eight years. I guess that means I want you to look at me the way Eddie used to.”

  George stood and took off his coat and loosened his tie. He raised his highball in a toast: “Here’s to it and from it and to it again. When you get to it do it for you may never get the chance to get to it to do it again.” He drained the highball and set it on a table. He sat down and stared at Vivian’s center.

  “That’s what Ed used to do,” she said.

  George hummed a few notes. Let me.

  “Forty years in the post office and then he died. I never figured it out. Still haven’t. I should’ve grabbed you when I had a chance.”

  “Why would you grab me?”

  “We went out twice. I met you down at Kinderhook Lake, Electric Park by the Ferris wheel. We danced a few dances at the pavilion and then we came back to Albany on the trolley. A week later you took me dancing out to Snyder’s Lake in your convertible. You were with a bunch of sassy fellows, with mouths on them. You weren’t that way but I thought you might be, so I didn’t encourage you. And then Peg took you out of circulation.”

  “Electric Park only kept the lights on till ten, and then the hicks went to sleep. The last trolley was at ten-fifteen. Thirty-five minutes to Albany, a grand ride, even in the dark.”

  “Sometimes romance went on in the back of the trolley.” She shifted her body forward, closer to George. “You’re a lovely man, Georgie.”

  He put his hand on her stocking so that his forefinger touched the flesh of her thigh. “Let me call you sweetheart,” he said.

  “You can call me that.”

  And he sang:“Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.”

  “Love,” whispered Vivian. “Where do they keep it?”

  “Will you dance with me, Vivian is it?”

  “I surely will, Georgie.” She stood and tossed her robe onto a chair.

  “Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true.”

  George put his right arm around her waist as he sang. He put one finger under the straps of her slip and her bra and moved them downward until her left breast was free. He kissed it.

  “Oh, George, it’s so nice to have you here tonight.”

  “Let me call you sweetheart . . .”

  As he sang he tried to move her to the waltz tempo, but the crowded room allowed for no pivoting and so he waltzed her in place, his feet moving one-two-three, with hers doing the same, but he held her so they did not move forward, just one-two-three, and again, in place, right here is just fine, and it’s getting better, and he ended the song:“I’m in love with you.”

  He stopped moving and kissed Vivian, a long kiss. There’s something about a kiss that you can’t get anyplace else.

  “Vadge, is that it?”

  “That’s it, Georgie. You got it.”

  Quinn the Samaritan parked by the Emergency entrance to Memorial Hospital and went inside for a stretcher. An orderly wheeled one to the door and with Matt’s help lifted Tremont out of Quinn’s backseat onto it. Medical expertise would now banish all ’ritises from the peripheries of Tremont, the assassin-in-progress. Drug that man. Be kind and send him back into the world painless.

  “You’re back,” the orderly said to Tremont.

  “You know Tremont?”

  “He’s a regular,” the orderly said.

  “He’s sick as hell,” Quinn said.

  The orderly nodded and wheeled Tremont inside. Matt followed.

  “You ain’t leavin’,” Tremont said.

  “I’ll be back. Matt’ll be with you.” Matt would stay with Tremont until he was safe in a room. Keep in touch through the city desk, Quinn told Matt. We’ll reconnect after my interview.

  “Who you interviewing?” Matt asked.

  “The Mayor.”

  “Very timely. Tell him not to accept rides from strangers.”

  Markson, the city editor, had cigarettes going in two ashtrays at the city desk where he was whittling away at a pile of copy with his pencil. In shirtsleeves, tie loose, loafers, no socks, pot belly gaining on him, Markson looked up as Quinn crossed the city room. Ten reporters were typing their stories, the copy desk editing them in full frenzy as the Times Union moved toward deadline for the first edition.

  “The Mayor,” Markson said, “did you nail him?”

  “I didn’t call him yet. Frankly I don’t think he’ll talk to me. I’m a public enemy, but that’s not the point.” Inhaling Markson’s twin columns of smoke Quinn reached over to stub out one cigarette but Markson slapped his hand.

  “I need all the smoke I can get,” he said. “I called the Mayor myself. He will see you. If he’s not in his office he’ll be at the Fort Orange Club. He’ll interrupt his cocktail hour for you. I told him what a great job he and the police were doing to keep down tension in the city and that we wanted to help and that you’re doing the story. I didn’t ask him about Bobby. You do that. You interpret what he says, even if it’s no comment. He’ll probably praise the hell out of him.”

  “Patsy McCall once said Bobby was a stiff and a louse. Alex didn’t contradict him.”

  “No need to resurrect that one. Let’s not make Alex sound like an assassin, all right?”

  “How about an assassin’s target?”

  And as Quinn sketched the assassination scheme Markson dropped his pencil and pushed his chair away from the desk. Quinn motioned him toward the teletype cubicle where the clacking covered their voices, and told him Tremont’s tale of Zuki, using no names, not Tremont, not Zuki, no mention of the Brothers, which was Markson’s first question: Are they in on it?

  Quinn said, “I have no idea and I’m making no accusations and I won’t name a name till I find out what’s real. I’ll keep you posted. I don’t want my source jailed as a conspirator, or maybe killed. He did nothing illegal. He backed off this scheme.”

  “He went to target practice.”

  “He did, and that was a mistake. He backed off when he heard Alex’s name.”

  “We couldn’t run the story even if you verified it, which you can’t. Everybody will lie. Your shooter’s a patsy and your man giving him the gun is either nuts or a provocateur. It’s conspiracy horseshit—let’s get the lefties. We got beaucoup stories tonight. We don’t need speculation.”

  “Unless somebody does shoot Alex. If not my man, somebody else.”

  “Goddamn it, Quinn, you’re a shit-stirrer.”

  Markson walked out of the cubicle, heading for the hierarchy on the second floor. No way he can handle this alone; no way Quinn can handle it alone either. Quinn checked the wire for the latest on Bobby: Condition critical, probably brain dead; police searching for a woman in a black and white polka dot dress who ran down the hotel stairs after the shooting and yelled in exultation, “We got Bobby Kennedy.” At his desk Quinn called Pat Mahar at the Elks. George never arrived. You sure? Positive. Beautiful, another goddamn calamity. Where the hell did he go? Where would he go? Quinn wanted to call Roy to find out what he knew about Zuki but first he called Doc Fahey at the detective office and asked him to have the night squad keep an eye out for George on the street, he may be lost, and he’s wearing a gray Palm Beach suit and a tan coconut straw hat. The cops know him for years, maybe not the young ones. He knows the city better than me, Doc said, but I’ll spread the word. Doc was right. George couldn’t get lost for very long in this town. Quinn called home and Renata told him Gloria was sleeping and Max was on his way there, she’d reached him at Cody’s. He’s very mysterious about coming to Albany, she said. He had lunch with Alex today at the Fort Orange Club. Maybe that has something to do with him coming here. Quinn told her George was roaming loose in town.

  He called Jake Hess, the newspaper’s lawyer and a personal friend for years, and asked, “Can I come over right now, Jake? Something dangerous is going on.”

  “You sou
nd desperate.”

  “I’m too confused to be desperate.”

  “Come on over.”

  A copy boy dropped a note on Quinn’s desk. Quinn read “Max,” and a number. He dialed it and a voice said, “Cody’s Havana Club,” and Quinn said, “Is that you, Roy?”

  “That’s me.”

  “It’s Quinn. This is weird. My next move is to call you but I get a message to call Max Osborne and you answer. Max—is he still there?”

  “He’s Gloria’s father.”

  “He certainly is.”

  “I hear she’s sick.”

  “She’s all right. She’s with my wife.”

  “Tell her I said to get better.”

  “Listen. Tremont Van Ort’s the sick one. I just dropped him at Memorial Hospital and he’s in fantastic pain, probably from booze, but he’s also in serious trouble. You talk to him lately?”

  “Two weeks ago, maybe. He was juiced. What trouble?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. This is important.”

  “To who?”

  “You, me, Tremont, the whole town. What’s your schedule?”

  “Half an hour I’m done here. Then I’m at the Brothers.”

  “Will you be there long?”

  “We’ll probably be on the street trying to head off trouble before it starts. I’ll be in and out.”

  “You know anybody named Zuki?”

  “Zuki? Why?”

  “I need to find him.”

  “Why?”

  “You win the Twenty Questions prize. Let me talk to Max.”

  “He left. A woman called and he went out. I know Zuki. He works with Baron Roland at Holy Cross, I don’t know what he does. He’s a student at the university. He showed up at the Brothers two weeks ago, wanted to talk but I didn’t have time.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Who am I to trust anybody?”

  Markson came back and said he’d told the story to Wheeler, the managing editor, who turned blue-green and took him down to Craig Penn, the publisher. “They want to call the FBI. I said it wasn’t real and might never be, but they want the FBI in on it and a report from you with names.”

  “You write it,” Quinn said. “You know as much as I do. Tell them I went to Troy to buy a shirt.” And Quinn picked up his notes and went out.

  Quinn referred to Tremont as Tex and Zuki as Roxy when he told the story to Jake Hess. Roxy, a young black in college, writing a book on Black Power, and Tex, a penniless, powerless, malleable, dying, grieving black man at the bottom of the world, in and out of jail half a dozen times as drunk and vagrant, also a veteran, Purple Heart, full of anger that can’t be mobilized against all the white bosses who stunted him, crippled him, his wife a drunk and now dead, his child a slum creature run off forever. And solitary Tex broods on fate, his gorge rising as he listens to Claudia the matriarch, the heroine of Better Streets, as she spews venom against the politicians who ignore us and our streets and treat us like the garbage they don’t even collect, like we live in a dump, she says, yeah, yeah, yeah a dump, says Tex, and the drink makes dump-life easier, calms him enough to let him imagine how the same people who killed Martin Luther King also killed Mary, poisoned her wine and gave him wine with the’ritises in it, but Tex says I’m stronger than she was, little bird of a thing couldn’t cut it, they killed my Mary ’cause they can’t handle us, so they guttin’ us one by one. And Roxy says to him, that’s the truth and we gotta get even. And Tex says you right, we gotta do that, and he reads a mimeographed letter signed by Black John that Roxy happened to find on the bar where they had gone to share their grief, and Black John says in his letter that black men gotta get up and move, stop hanging on the apron strings of the old mammies, those sweet old gals who want to run the town, let ’em try, ain’t doin’ no harm, but nobody in power’s gonna pay ’em no mind, you gotta go out on your own, black man, do what Black John is doin’, stand up to the white man, be a damn man, black man, be a man, don’t let the fat women talk for you, talk for yourself and let ’em all know you’re livin’, show ’em what a black man can do. And Tex says to Roxy, who is this Black John? Damn if I know, Roxy says, he just writes these letters and sends ’em around. Well, says Tex, he’s right, but what we gonna do and how we gonna do it? And Roxy says, we got to think this out, and that’s just what I been doing, writing this book about it, about the black man getting power, we had power in Korea, didn’t we? You were in Korea? Tex asks, and Roxy says, you know the battle of Chipyong-ni? I know it, Tex says. Hell of a show, says Roxy, and I got me some gooks. Tex says I got me a few, and Roxy says I heard you did, I heard you were a good shot and that you got the medals to prove it. I am a hell of a shot, Tex says. You can make money bein’ a hell of a shot, Roxy says. How you do that, Tex asks, hold up banks? Take out some of these no-good motherfucks, Roxy says. Take ’em out? And Roxy says, Get somebody nobody gonna miss or mourn and they don’t even ask who did it. He’s gone, he’s all done, that’s fine, thank you kindly, mister. Like Bobby Kennedy, that no-good, just because he’s a Kennedy, fuck him, you could shoot him. Shoot Bobby Kennedy? Who could? What the hell you talkin’ about? And Roxy says I’m talkin’ money. And he takes Tex out to practice his shooting.

  Jake Hess cocked his head and said, “Bobby Kennedy?”

  If Jake knew that Quinn was talking about Tremont thinking about shooting Alex Fitzgibbon and not Bobby, who was already shot, he’d pick up the phone and call Alex; for Jake, though now counsel for the newspaper, had for forty years been part of the legal brain trust of the Democratic political machine that ran this town—Patsy McCall and Roscoe Conway and Elisha Fitzgibbon, and now Elisha’s son, Alex Fitzgibbon. And Jake knew where all the bodies were buried. Yet Quinn never trusted anybody in politics more than he trusted Jake Hess, a principled man who would be the first person Quinn called if he went to jail, which was why he was now talking to Jake, who would know which way to move through this conundrum. Jake’s parents were Russian Jews who had fled the pogroms, a cultured man with ashen hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, gold watch chain looped across his vest, never without his suitcoat, soft-spoken, a 24-karat smile, and a conscience that, against the odds, had survived the political wars.

  “You’re saying Tex is the one who shot Bobby?” Jake asked.

  “No, Tex was here in town, too drunk even to shoot himself. Bobby’s just my for-instance,” Quinn said.

  “Some for-instance.”

  “Roxy had somebody else in mind, but I can’t get specific yet.”

  “What’s your question?”

  “Can they arrest Tex just for being ready to shoot somebody like Bobby Kennedy?”

  “He would have to commit an overt act before anybody could prosecute him,” Jake said.

  “What about being part of a conspiracy?”

  “You need the overt act.”

  “Is giving Tex an AR-15 and taking him for target practice and giving him money to do a shooting—is that an overt act?”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “I don’t know, but Tex says he’s still got the AR-15.”

  “An overt act isn’t necessarily a criminal act.”

  “What about trying to talk somebody into a crime?”

  “Criminal solicitation. But you need something that puts it into play.”

  “What if somebody like me finds out about a conspiracy or a criminal solicitation? If I don’t tell anybody is that a crime?”

  Jake’s phone rang and he mostly listened to whoever it was, not looking at Quinn. When he hung up he said, “That was your publisher.”

  “Penn?”

  “Penn. He mentioned your assassin and said the Mayor is his target.”

  “He talks too much,” Quinn said. “See why I can’t use names? He probably already called the Mayor.”

  “He hasn’t but he wonders if he should.”

  “Did he call the FBI?”

  “He wants to.”

  “You didn’t tell him to go ahead, did yo
u?”

  “I said I’d call him back.”

  “What about when I go out that door, will you call the Mayor and give him my news?”

  “I think he’d rather hear it from you.”

  “I tell the Mayor somebody’s planning to shoot him, that’s your legal advice?”

  “He’s had threats before. I’m sure he’d appreciate the tip.”

  “How do I protect Tex?”

  “He’s safe. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “What if I don’t tell the Mayor and somebody actually shoots him?”

  “You might have a problem, but not a legal one.”

  “Guilt?”

  “Guilt is an elective. Reprisal, perhaps?”

  “If I’m arrested will you represent me?”

  “Only if you feel guilty.”

  “You think this will make a good book?”

  “Your friend Tex, you mean?”

  “Everything that’s happening, the whole megillah. Who’d believe what’s going on right this minute? Tex, Roxy, Claudia, Roy Mason, Matt Daugherty, Bobby, riots, vigils, my wino friends, and maybe you and me thrown in for the hell of it. There’s a lot of mystery and they’re all telling me to pay attention to them.”

  “Sounds like a panoramic newsreel.”

  “That’s not worth writing. If I can’t find a focus the hell with everybody. People like the title—The Slum Book—but they don’t like the subject. Another protest book? The woods are full of them. I see heroes but editors see winos and bums. Who wants to read about bums, especially bums in Albany?”

  “They don’t know our bums.”