Ride the Pink Horse (17 page)

The abuelita said something. It was in her own tongue and the thongs of helplessness wound tighter about him. The woman from whom he had turned his eyes said in her heavy accent, “She say take off your coat.”

He looked at the abuelita. Her claws pantomimed it. He turned an almost frantic look towards the old crone and the work woman. They had not moved. They weren’t going to move. They had come to see the show. Or they’d come to gossip by the cold hearth and this was all a part of the everyday at the abuelita’s.

He took off his coat, began unbuttoning his shirt. Unbuttoned it slowly, feeling naked, ashamed. He hadn’t known shame since he was a kid, a cowed kid taught shame by his mother’s old-fashioned scruples. In the Sen’s world nobody thought anything about taking off his shirt before strangers. The Sen did half his business while he was dressing.

Sailor didn’t try to track down his queasiness; shaming the shame, he pulled off his shirt and stood there as if he were naked, not merely half-naked. Fear had returned to him, atavistic fear; he was helpless before three witches. It was this which had delayed his hand; before their incantations he needed all the protective barriers of civilization, even a dirty shirt. He knew now the root of his hesitancy in coming to this house; a fear of the primitive, root fear of the alien and the strange which had been threaded through these three days. He was a city man. The city didn’t have to be Chi. He’d been in Detroit and Minneapolis and Kansas City, once to Philadelphia; he was at home in any of them. He wasn’t a foreigner on city streets. But this place wasn’t civilized. Behind the strangeness, lay the primitive; this land was too close to an ancient past. He would not be caught in its caves; he would get away before he was buried, before the stone woman turned him to stone.

He swaggered, “Okay, Grammaw, how does it look?” He was shivering as he had last night, unable to control the shakes, even before she laid her lifeless fingers on the place of the knife.

He smelled of the earth and Pancho’s serape and unwashed sweat, his breath smelled of stale garlic. He was unclean and he knew himself to be. Yet he had to stand there naked in his filth while she wadded and mumbled and pried and smelled him. While the other witches watched with obscene eyes.

He took it she was satisfied by the mumbling, by the little shakes of her head. He took it she was finished with him when she began tucking the little packets of twigs back into her dirty handkerchief.

“Got a place I can wash up?” he asked.

She didn’t know a word he said but the younger woman did. “You wish to wash?”

“Yeah.” He gathered up his shirt and coat She led him into the kitchen, a big old-fashioned kitchen with a coal stove warming it. The table and chairs were old and ugly; green-and-red-and-yellow plaid oilcloth was tacked on the table top. She poured water from a tea kettle into a tin basin, cooled it from the tap, set it on the table. She put a broken cake of Ivory beside it. Then she went away.

No bathroom. Outhouse in back, you could see it from the kitchen windows. Some way to live. Even if you were a bunch of old witches. This one was back with a clean towel for him. He said, “Thanks. Gracias.” They’d have him turning into a spic if he stayed around much longer.

She sat down on a wooden chair and he saw she’d brought needle and dark thread. She was mending the tear in his coat He didn’t have the nerve to do a sponge bath before her. Just his hands, but he washed them as if they were embedded with grime. Kept washing them, hoping she’d get out and let him splash his face. She didn’t. He dried his hands, took up his shirt.

She said in a heavy accent “If you wait a minute, I will mend your shirt.”

He gave his head a shake. “Thanks. Haven’t time.” He wanted to get away fast. From his mother mending his broken clothes. He hadn’t worn patches since he left home. He wasn’t going back to patches. He’d throw these clothes away. Tomorrow. He was awkward with the shirt, the new dressing burning his shoulder; she came over to him and helped him.

He said again, “Thanks. Gracias,” even as he withdrew from her. She helped him with the coat. Her hands were work-veined like those of slum women.

He could get out now. Almost as dirty as when he came, and his shoulder jumping when it hadn’t hurt before. He strode into the front room, handed a dollar to the abuelita. She’d probably have to split with her big fat nephew who’d brought him here when he’d wanted a doc and no questions asked. He’d be out of this town by night, with his dough. Pick up a plane in Albuquerque and be in Mexico City tomorrow. Get him a real doc there. Get him a new suit. Tomorrow night he and Ziggy would be sitting in the best hotel ordering champagne. Toasting the Sen, the late, unlamented Sen.

2

It was past ten-thirty. He couldn’t waste any more time. He didn’t want the Sen to skip out on him. The Sen had seen him without a shave before. The La Fonda swells could turn up their noses; they wouldn’t when he had that five grand in his pocket. The Sen didn’t have any choice after last night; he knew he had to pay up or Sailor would hand the noose to Mac. He knew Sailor wouldn’t be taking any more of the stall. What the Sen didn’t know was that choice had been eliminated; he was going to pay and swing both.

The Plaza was strumming, music on the bandstand, music on twirling Tio Vivo, strolling musicians on the paths. Chimney pots smoking, costumes glittering, voices lifted in laughter and singing. Sailor didn’t enter the square. He walked on up the street, crossed to La Fonda. He paid no attention to those coming out or those entering with him. He walked right on in. The lobby was seething this early, like a convention, a convention of fancy-dressed actors. There was a lot of noise coming from the bar. In the patio the sun and the fountain, the geraniums and the striped awnings of the swings and umbrella tables were like something on a stage.

Sailor didn’t waste time, he made for the house phone, called the Sen’s number. He could hear the ringing, over and again, no answer. He clapped down the phone. The Sen didn’t get up early; not unless he was running out. Maybe he’d told them not to put through any calls. Sailor strode to the elevator, rode up to four. His knock on the door was the only sound in the empty corridor; he tightened the hand in his right-hand pocket while his pounding shattered silence. But there was no answer from within.

He went back to the elevator, put his finger on the buzzer and left it there. The Sen was probably in the Placita having his morning cocktail and coffee. Dressed up clean and white, using his voice tenderly on Iris Towers’ clean whiteness, fooling her with soap and water and a razor and his rotten sweet voice.

The pretty little elevator girl didn’t say anything when Sailor got in. Didn’t give him hell for hanging on the buzzer, the way a Chi yahoo would have done. And get his teeth broken for it. The elevator slid down in silence. He left it in the same silence, walked up the portal, seeing no one. He couldn’t go out in the Placita after the Sen, not until he was clean. He turned downstairs to the barber shop. It looked swank as the hotel but there were only two operators and both chairs filled. He walked through the room, out to the street and across to a shop that looked like any barber shop. He didn’t have to wait; the customers of this one weren’t steaming out hangovers, they were dancing in the streets. “Shave and shine,” Sailor said.

The fat, bald barber wasn’t gabby. Maybe he wanted to close up and get out into the streets too. The job didn’t take long. Sailor looked a lot better already.

The biggest men’s store was closed, Labor Day; but the little one further on down was open. He bought a blue shirt, a pair of socks and shorts. He started back to La Fonda but he changed his mind on that. Somebody might get officious; all Sailor needed right now was a bastard to get officious. There’d be trouble. He didn’t want trouble; he was saving that for the Sen.

He went to the bus station, changed in the can, wrapped his dirty laundry and checked it in a locker. He looked okay. He looked swell. He could sit in La Fonda all day if he wanted to. Sit there until he caught up with the Sen. He went back to the hotel. It was noon now. He pushed into the Cantina. The Sen wasn’t there. Hundreds of costumes were cramming the cocktail room but no Sen. He edged and shoved through to the Placita. The head waitress was crisp as her white dress. But polite. She said, “I haven’t a table right now.”

He could tell that. He said, “I’m just looking for a friend. Thanks.” He counted faces. And he saw hers. Delicate, fine, her silver-gold hair tracing the shape of her face. There were white flowers in her hair; her dress was white peasant stuff, the blouse cut low off her golden shoulders. The mucker, Kemper Prague, was pressing against her shoulder but he couldn’t touch her. She was clean as sunshine; the other women looked as if they’d been soaked in rum all night, their eyes haggard, but she was clean. The men looked like hangovers, young men, not an old weasel among them.

Sailor moved his eyes clockwise across the tables, counter clockwise back again to hers. The Sen wasn’t there; he wasn’t in the Placita. Sailor could have walked over to her table, it was only a few paces. He looked a lot better than the guys she was sitting with. She wasn’t a princess or an angel from heaven; she was Iris Towers, a Chicago girl. The same as any other Chicago girl only her father was a big millionaire. He could walk right over and ask it courteously like he’d learned from the Sen. “Do you know where I could find Senator Douglass?” She’d be polite too because she was brought up that way. She’d tell him where the Sen was. She’d know. He stood there and her head moved and he was looking into her eyes, her clear blue eyes. She looked at him. But there was no recognition; only that a man was standing there looking at her. He turned on his heel and left.

He didn’t care whom he elbowed getting out of the Cantina. He saw no one, only the fact that the Sen still wasn’t there. There was the jingle of sleigh bells, the thud of drums, as he stepped into the lobby. And a crowd blocking further exit, a solid half circle moving in to where four Indians stood, Indian men, painted, feathered, looking like Indians should, like Indians in a book. Two were naked but for the bells on their wrists and ankles, the beaded breech clouts, the gaudy circles of parrot feathers decorating the clouts before and behind. Their braids wound with ribbons, a few feathers in their hair. The other two men wore bright shirts and blue jeans, moccasins on their feet, silver and turquoise beads and belts. One thudded an enormous tapering drum, almost waist high, hung with feathers. The second began to chant as Sailor moved into the circle, and the naked Indians were dancing. Pawing and thudding the floor, bells ringing, feathers shimmering, naked muscles tight under lean brown flesh. The dance ended as sharply as it began; the singer was silenced, the dancers circled bell-like, quietly; the drum was a muffled roll.

It began again with the high-pitched call. With hoops now, a dozen or more thin willowy hoops in the dancers’ hands. Wilder than before, shivering their bodies through the hoops, bent double through the smallest circles, their feet beating incessant with the drums, the bells jeering. The Sen ought to be here. The Sen liked to go back to Chicago and tell about the fancy things he’d seen.

Sailor’s eyes quickened about the massed circle. Across was McIntyre. Mac’s eyes were watching the Indian dancers, not scanning the crowd for the Sen or for Sailor. That meant Mac knew where they both were. That meant Sailor could find out about the Sen.

Another dance. A warrior dance, the dancers lunging at each other, without warning letting out startling whoops. It made him jumpy. Then it was over, the dancers jingling away on soft feet, the drum beating away into silence. The crowd broke, speaking silly things to exorcise the spell.

Sailor started around the outskirts, to come on Mac by accident. His step faltered. He picked up his stride again; he didn’t want to think about that. About the Indian faces with no expression; even when they war-whooped, no expression. Like the Indians in the street and under the museum portal. Under the brown stone faces, this violence. Under the silent wastes of this land, their land, what violence? The fear, the unknown fear was rising in Sailor but he set his steps hard, pushed it down. And Mac wasn’t around.

Sailor went down the right-hand portal, crossed the lounge, looked in the New Mexican room and the dining room. No Sen. No Mac. He could wait. He didn’t have anything else to do. More comfortable here than walking the dirty streets. He was in luck for once. Somebody moved off a leather chair right in the middle of the lobby, across from the desk. Nobody could come in the side door or front door, nobody could leave the bar or go to the desk without him seeing. He’d like to try the house phone again; it was over there, the Sen might be on the other end of it. But the Sen’s room had been too empty and he didn’t want to have to stand up all afternoon for nothing.

He lit a cigarette, nice hammered-copper ash tray at hand. If he only had a beer, he’d be more comfortable than he’d been since he blew in. He rested, comfortable, in the chair. Only his eyes moving, watching left and right, not seeming to watch. He didn’t need to keep his right hand where it usually was. There wouldn’t be any punk stalking him in the center of La Fonda lobby.

“Looking for the senator?”

He lifted his eyes easy. “Hello, Mac. How’s Fiesta?”

Somebody got up from the couch next to his chair, as if they’d been holding the place for Mac. Mac sat down.

“Viva las Fiestas,” Mac said. Even he was turning Spanish like his hat and sash.

“Sure,” Sailor said. He wasn’t going to be in a hurry to talk about the Sen. Mac wasn’t apt to get too far from the subject. “When you going back?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Mac said. He wasn’t gabby this afternoon. He was taking things just as easy as Sailor. “When you going back?”

“I don’t know,” Sailor said offhand. It sounded too much as if he were waiting for orders from the Sen, and he added, “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“You’re going back?” Mac didn’t have any expression on his face.

“To Chi?” Sailor shouldn’t have sounded amazed, even to his own ears. But he was. The idea of Mac thinking he wouldn’t be going back to Chicago. He couldn’t wait to get back. Back where you knew what to expect, back where there were lights and buildings and shows and people—and life! He woke up. He wasn’t going back. He was going to Mexico. His laugh wasn’t good. “What made you ask that?”

Mac was calm as ever. “I thought maybe you weren’t counting on going back.”

“I can’t wait to get back.” State Street, Michigan Boulevard, North Shore, The Stevens, the Palmer House, the Lake, the cold wet wind off the Lake. Field’s and the Athletic Club and the Trib Tower and Ziggy’s office right about next door. Ziggy’s office was closed up. For good. Sailor wasn’t staying in this dump anyway. He was going down to Mexico City and it was a city, a swell city. Ziggy knew; he’d been there. Sailor didn’t say it again, not out loud; there was only the echo in his ear: I can’t wait to get back.

There were other places as good as Chicago. Plenty of them. He took a deep drag off the cigarette. “I thought you’d be waiting for the Sen.”

Mac said, “I think he’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

He wasn’t sure the way Mac said it, whether Mac had found out all he wanted and was taking the Sen back with him or whether the Sen was running out and he was just tagging along. The Sen wasn’t going to wait for Iris Towers, or he’d changed her plans. The Sen didn’t like Mac’s breath warming his neck. He didn’t know Mac would be plodding behind him waiting for the break. The Sen’s time was running short. Sailor was the break. The Sen would settle today or Sailor would give Mac what he wanted.

He asked it casual. “Where is the Sen today? You seen him?”

“He’s sick,” Mac said.

Mac was trying to catch Sailor off guard. That’s what he was doing sitting here, popping out with stuff you weren’t expecting, with that dead-pan face of his.

Sailor didn’t even move his little finger. He just laughed. “What’s the matter with him? Too big a night?”

“I don’t think that’s it Not all of it.” Mac threw another fast one. “How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine.” The Sen wasn’t in his room. Unless he was holed up there not answering the phone, not answering the door. Unless he was that sick. He wouldn’t be that sick with Iris Towers likely to be outside the door, on the other end of the phone. “It was only a scratch,” Sailor said. “Some guy must have make a mistake.”

“Yeah, it was probably a mistake,” Mac droned.

He could be meaning the guy was a poor judge of distance. He didn’t know about Sailor ducking just at the right time. That was one thing even Mac couldn’t know. When lightning would flash. “What’s the matter with the Sen?” He brought it back.

“I don’t know. Just not feeling too good, according to Amity. You ready to talk yet, Sailor?”

“What about?” He was just as noncommittal as Mac. He’d play it Mac’s way. But he knew where the Sen was. Mac had told him that much. Not that Mac knew he’d been giving out. Sailor should have thought of it before; it was one of the Sen’s favorite dodges. Holing up in another guy’s room when he didn’t want anybody to know where he was. When he’d come in from Washington unexpected to do a little business. Holing up in Sailor”s apartment.

The Sen might be in Amity’s. He might be in Iris Towers’ room, lying on her bed sick because he was worried, because things hadn’t gone his way for once. Because Sailor had roughed his game.

“Where were you the night of Mrs. Douglass’ death?”

A quick pitch but the same old question. Sailor was gentle. “Why, Mac,” he said. “You know where I was. I was down at Ziggy’s working on the books. We worked there till your boys came in to tell us about the tragedy. We never left the place.”

“You never left the place.”

“You know we didn’t, Mac.”

”I’m not asking about Zigler,” Mac said. “I’m asking about you.”

“For God’s sake, Mac. You know every step I took that night. You sat in on the testimony.”

“You never left the place,” Mac repeated.

His own lips were as tight. “I never left the place,” he lied with emphasis. It was kind of funny swearing to a lie now and maybe by evening telling Mac the truth. Mac wouldn’t think it funny; he was used to it. Mac would know it was all in the game. “You’re not trying to pin that rap on me, Mac?”

Mac said, “I don’t pin raps, Sailor. I’m after Mrs. Douglass’ killer.”

“You’re not after me.”

“Maybe not.”

“You’re not.” He’d talk this much. “If you were you wouldn’t have been here ahead of me. You’d have been trailing.” He explained Mac’s own moves to him. As if Mac didn’t know what he was doing. “You didn’t get here first because you knew I was heading this way. I didn’t know it myself until the day I took the bus.”