“Lydell was tough to get on with.”
“Remember me, Mr. Big Stuff? I bought you your first ice cream suit.”
Mahomet let go of Quincy’s hand and embraced Krystal. They were the same height. He left one arm around her waist. “Staying to hear me talk?”
“Well, the line was too long at the Poitier picture.”
“I’ll try to make up for it.”
Wilson McCoy, in his dusty coveralls from his job at the brick factory, made his way through the crowd, jingling his keys. For once he wasn’t wearing his beret. “Fucking bus was late,” he told Mahomet. “Let’s go in.” He turned to mount the porch without acknowledging Quincy’s presence. By agreement, they hadn’t had direct contact since before the shooting at the Penobscot Building.
Police had counted 147 holes in the elevator car. Pasquale Oro and Michael Nicholas Gallante were pronounced dead at the scene and Herschel Schmerer, alias Sean Devlin, died in the ambulance on the way to Detroit Receiving. Ovid “Sweets” Sito, the bodyguard, lived for two hours with bullets in his brain, chest, and stomach, then expired without having regained consciousness. Being sought were three Negroes in their early twenties and a security guard named Paul Arnet, who had disappeared from his post earlier that afternoon and was still missing from home. Quincy had thought McCoy an idiot to go on operating his blind pig and conducting BLAC meetings, but since the artists’ renditions that had appeared in the papers and on TV of the killer in the beret didn’t remotely resemble him, maybe he was wise to go on as if nothing had happened. Quincy himself had been questioned and released when a waitress at the Butcher’s Inn on Winder confirmed that he’d been eating there when the incident took place.
The crowd outside thinned as people entered the house. Just as Quincy and Krystal turned away from the street a blue car blatted past and he looked, his body tensing, just in time to see a taillight flick around the corner. He made himself relax. Everywhere he looked lately he was seeing blue Cobras.
McCoy, having unlocked the front door for his guests, was standing on the porch talking with Sebastian Bright. They both turned when Quincy and Krystal started up the steps, but they weren’t looking at them.
“Wilson McCoy?”
The man who had called out, tall and white in a neat black suit and narrow-brimmed hat, climbed past Quincy accompanied by two Detroit police officers in uniform, both white, and another white plainclothesman, shorter and wider than Sebastian Bright, wearing a wrinkled jacket and double-knit pants and a hat with a five-inch brim like they didn’t sell any more in stores. Quincy recognized Inspector Canada and the fat sergeant with a woman’s name, what was it, Ethel or Edith. Esther.
“This a private party.” McCoy started to go inside. One of the uniformed officers grasped his arm.
“You’re wanted for questioning in a quadruple homicide,” Canada said. “Let’s go downtown.”
“Whitey’s going to kill me!” shouted McCoy.
One of Sebastian Bright’s men tried to seize Canada’s arms from behind. The inspector elbowed him in the throat, cross-drew a short-barreled Chief’s Special, and aimed it at the man’s face. “Back down off the porch. Everybody off the porch,” he barked. “This is police business.”
“White motherfuckers!” Krystal lunged, her long-nailed fingers hooked like claws. Quincy caught her around the waist and dragged her, kicking and twisting, off the porch.
The crowd was surging back outdoors now, becoming vocal. The fat sergeant stood on the top step with his revolver out to cover the others’ backs. The uniforms had handcuffs on McCoy, who kept saying, “Don’t let them do this to me! You going to let them do this to me?”
A bottle sailed past the inspector’s head and exploded against a porch post, showering glass and whiskey everywhere. “Radio for backup,” Canada said. The sergeant retreated down the steps, backing and turning, and slipped around the corner of the house. Quincy had wondered where they’d parked the car.
There were people all over now. The porch boards groaned under their weight and they were standing in the yard and on the sidewalk and in the middle of the street, blocking the officers’ way out. Many of them had come out of the other houses in the block.
“This is where it starts!” McCoy shouted. One of the uniforms slammed the prisoner’s head against the wall of the house and he quieted down.
“Fucking pig!” Krystal’s heels raked Quincy’s shins. He cursed and held on. Sirens thrilled in the distance.
Mahomet’s white suit appeared on the porch. He had his hands raised and his mouth was moving, but Quincy couldn’t hear what he was saying.
The sirens were getting louder. They sounded like they were coming from all over the city, answering one another like wolves. Quincy transferred his grip to Krystal’s wrist and pulled her a block and a half down Kercheval to where the Sting Ray was parked. He threw her across the seat and slammed the door. “Stay in there till I get back or you can pedal your ass from now on.”
“Where you going?”
“Back to get Mahomet.”
Blue-and-whites from Motor Traffic and the Tactical Mobile Unit were entering the block from both ends. More bottles had been smashed, their fragments twinkling in the red and blue of the strobes. One of the officers who had handcuffed Wilson McCoy pushed down his head and shoved him into the backseat of a cruiser. Other uniforms in riot helmets moved through the crowd with sticks and bayoneted rifles—bayonets, for chrissake—quartering it and isolating the hotspots. Quincy knew a flash of dread when he couldn’t see Mahomet on the porch. Then he spotted him at ground level, a whitecap bobbing in a sea of bright shirts and halter tops, still talking with his arms raised.
Something struck Quincy hard between the shoulder blades. He stumbled and grabbed at the fender of a parked car for support. His legs were kicked out from under him and his hair was grabbed from behind and his face slammed into the hood. He felt his nose give. A hand frisked him from neck to ankles, his wrists were jerked behind his back and clamped together.
“Let him go.”
Snuffling blood, Quincy turned his cheek to the warm hood. Inspector Canada was standing on the other side of the car. He’d lost his hat and his crisp black hair was in his eyes.
“Inspector—” The voice behind Quincy was muffled.
“He didn’t do anything. Take off the cuffs.”
His wrists were freed. He straightened up, leaned a hip against the fender. The officer who had cuffed him had on a white helmet with a tinted Plexiglas shield that hid his face. Only the hands sticking out of his blue shirtcuffs told Quincy the man was black. “Sorry, Inspector. I thought—”
“Get back with the others.” Canada came around to Quincy’s side of the car and gave him his handkerchief. “Is it broken?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He blew into it and mopped the blood from his upper lip. The front of his face was growing numb, a sure sign.
“McCoy did it, didn’t he?”
He tipped back his head and pinched his nostrils shut with the hand holding the handkerchief. “Did what?”
“You know damn well what. He shouldn’t have worn the beret. Did you pay him, or is this one of those brotherhood things?”
“I just want to get Mahomet out of here. He gets beat up on a lot.”
“That officer wasn’t so far off. We’ll just have to come back and do it all over again when McCoy talks.”
Quincy lowered his head. “He won’t talk.”
“About what?”
“About nothing. This ain’t no cops and robbers, Mr. Police Man. This here’s war. You’re the enemy.”
“It didn’t have to come to this. You had your chance to stop it when we talked back in June.”
“It was already started.” He held out the handkerchief. “Thanks.”
“Keep it. It’s bloody.”
“Nigger bastard!”
Quincy turned toward the new voice just as the gun fired. He felt a hot wind on his cheek. Harry DiJesus, his face demonic in the light of the strobes, was standing in the middle of Kercheval with his feet spread and an automatic clamped between both outstretched palms. Canada’s revolver was out and he returned fire. There was a moment of darkness while the beacons rotated away from each other, then when their beams crossed again the spot where DiJesus had been standing was vacant. “Get down!” Canada crouched behind the fender on his side. His head swiveled slowly from left to right. Bodies ran back and forth through the pulsating lights.
Four shots rattled, too close together for a revolver. The sound came from behind Quincy. He wheeled. Mahomet was standing in an opening created by the four wrestlers who never left his side, his arms still raised above his head. Four red spots the size of half-dollars had spoiled his white vest; Quincy thought crazily of strawberries and cream. Mahomet, looking around, spotted Quincy and he started to smile. Then his knees bent and his head tipped forward and the rest of him followed.
DiJesus was crouched six feet away with his back to Quincy, still holding the pistol in target stance. He turned, his eyes darting, and the light when it struck them came back glowing green as from an animal’s. Canada fired twice. The first bullet was high and struck DiJesus in the throat, neatly parting the gold chain around his neck. It glittered as it slithered down inside his T-shirt. The second entered his chest on the left side. He fell.
There was a lull in the shouting and running. Quincy walked past DiJesus’ body without stopping to look at it and stood over Mahomet. Mighty Joe Young was kneeling with Mahomet’s head in his lap. The eyes were already growing soft and glistening.
“What was he saying?”
One of the Bongos looked up, startled. Quincy repeated the question.
“Same thing, over and over,” said Anthony Battle. “‘Be calm, brothers and sisters. This is the test.’ “
H
E SLEPT, WOKE UP,
and went out and ate something at a counter, where the Marine type in the paper hat who took his order kept watching him out of the corner of his eye as he griddled the pancakes. Rick caught his reflection, unshaven and still wearing the shirt he’d put on the day before, in the chrome steel of a Bunn coffee maker behind the counter and sympathized. Back at the apartment he turned on the TV without turning up the sound and watched the Porter Parade all over again. Then Captain Kangaroo came on and he switched off the set. He had another drink just to maintain his buzz, then slept again. He woke up again in the afternoon and had another. In the evening when he woke up he felt like doing something.
“Hello?”
The voice in the earpiece sounded foggy.
“Dan, this is Rick.”
“Rick. Jesus Christ, what time is it?”
Outside it was dark and he had left the lamps off, but the face of the shelf clock was visible in the flicker from the wastebasket. “A little after eleven. Did I wake you up?”
“That four a.m. shift’s a pain in the butt.” Sugar sounded wide awake now. “You get them? You get the letters?”
“Letters, who writes letters any more? It’s a lost art, like undercover work in the age of listening devices.”
“You drunk?”
He introduced water to the ouzo. The glass reflected the orangish, wobbling illumination that was growing now, making shadows writhe on the walls and ceiling.
“Have drunk,” Rick corrected. “Pluperfect tense. The following is a list of words that require helpers: drunk, swung, hung, dung—help me out here… .”
“You are drunk.”
“Spifflicated.”
“What?”
“My mother’s word. She used it when she chewed out my father so I wouldn’t understand. They sold the stuff out of cars in front of Dodge Main and he never got past them walking a straight line. Spifflicated, I just remembered. Haven’t thought of it in thirty years.”
“You’re celebrating, right? You got them.”
“Got what?”
“The letters! Dear Love-buggy, your Wendy-poo misses oo. How many you got? They really hot?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re hot.” The next sip cleared his fog. “Listen, Dan—”
“Anything we can quote in the papers? We can use what-chacallum, asterisks for the really hot parts. That always makes ’em seem worse. Bring them over. No, better stay there. Where are you, your place? I’ll be there in twenty.”
“I don’t have them, Dan. She burned them.”
“She what? Who’s she?”
“Enid. The Kohler woman. She burned them in her fireplace, every last one. Months ago.”
“Bullshit. Broads don’t destroy that kind of thing. My wife still has her wedding corsage and we ain’t talked to each other in a year. You toss the place?”
“They’re gone, Dan.”
During the pause on Sugar’s end, Rick leaned across the arm of his chair and slid the window up another few inches. The air in the room was getting hazy.
Sugar blew out. “Okay, we ain’t dead, just crippled a little. Make her a deal. She want to be famous? ‘Muckraker’s Mistress Tells All,’ we’ll get her on magazine covers, TV. It could lead to a movie deal like that Keeler cunt. Tell her there’s a couple of grand in it for her besides. No, shit, make it ten, we ain’t cheap. They do anything, you know, kinky? Don’t matter. We’ll take her picture with a schnauzer. No kidding, I’m getting into this.”
“I quit.”
“Stop clowning around. We got work to do.”
“I quit is what I said. Tell Fred Donner to stick it up his tailpipe. I’m hanging up my cloak and dagger. Don’t bother with severance pay or references.”
“Listen, we’ll talk about this when you’re not cockeyed. I had a nickel for every time I got a snootful and decided to tell the boss what I thought of him—”
“So long, Dan.”
“Wait! What you going to do to eat?”
“I’ve still got my wrenches.”
“You ain’t got shit. The title on that Camaro? It’s a fake. The car belongs to General Motors security. Answer the door, chump. That’s the repo man knocking.”
“He’ll find the keys in the ignition. I’ve got enough put away for a used Buick I saw advertised in the
News.
”
“That’d kill you.”
“It won’t, but the Camaro might have. A car’s just something to get you around, hopefully in one piece.”
“You motherfu—”
The flames in the metal wastebasket were dying down now. After Rick hung up on Sugar he got a long-handled cooking fork from the little kitchen and stirred the ashes until the unburned portion of the letters caught fire, then doused the sparks with water from the pitcher. Black smoke boiled out and found its way to the window.