A Conversation with the Mann (54 page)

My head whipped, looked for a newsstand. Found one. Went for it. Grabbed a
Times
, ignored the yelling newsy as I tore threw it looking … looking …

It wasn't the whole paper at my door, it was only—

I threw cash at the newsy, a wad of it, shut him up.

The Metro section: The MTA thinking about a fare hike. A man attacked by rats in the park. Suicide in Midtown. The borough
president promising to devote a street crew to just fixing potholes. A string of muggings has ritzy Park Ave. all jittery.
The library was opening—

The paper crunched. An involuntary jerk—realization delayed—crumbled it in my hands. I opened the paper again just ahead of
a panic that was racing me down. The suicide in Mid-town. My eyes bounced all over the article, unable to read it in a steady
fashion: the Waldorf-Astoria. Tourist. Jumped. Miami man. Dighton Spooner.

The paper got crumbled up again; I strangled it against my body as I clutched at myself trying to hold in a sickness that
was eating me from the inside out.

The newsy, not yelling at me now. Now he was asking me if I was all right. People touching me, grabbing at me: “You okay,
mister?” “Mister, you need help?” A thousand shrill voices, ice picks to my head. I swung and swatted at them. I flailed my
way free of the murmuring. I clawed through the avenue foot traffic madman-style.

A phone booth.

I stumbled into a phone booth. Shut the door. Shut them out. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't… I had to talk myself calm, had to
talk myself into believing that maybe … that probably it was a suicide. Here was this Dighton cat, strictly a hick from Backwatersville,
gets the heave by the Mrs., no prospects in the big city and the only dough he's got is out of my pocket. Sprinkle a little
booze on top of all that, and it's a recipe for taking a fast trip to the sidewalk.

Wasn't it?

It was. I told myself it was.

I spent three minutes on the floor of a phone booth telling myself it was.

I didn't buy it.

One more minute of sitting.

I hauled myself up, got a coin from my pocket, and slotted it.

I dialed.

Bobbie answered. I gave her some hello, how are you, how's the house jazz, then fast as I could got around to asking if Frank
was home. She told me he was and went off to get him.

Seemed like a year before he picked up the phone.

“Frank …”

“Jackie, what's do—”

“Did you kill him?”

“What?”

“Did you have some guys go over there and—”

“You fuckin' crazy?” His wheeze sounding like a bellows. “You out of your goddamn mind! ”

Was I? I must've been to be talking to a man like Frank—a man like Frank, whose line could very possibly be cop- or FBI-tapped—
about such things as murder.

I said for whatever ears might be listening: “I'm … I'm kidding around, Frank. I'm a comedian. I'm just… I'm a ladder.”

“You had a problem.”

“What's tha—”

“You had a problem, didn't you?”

“Yeah, I … I had one.”

“Well, you ain't got one no more. That's what you wanted, you dumb-jig bastard. That's what you got. And don't be fuckin'
callin' me up no more. Never! You goddamn—”

The exclamation was the slam of Frank's phone in my ear.

My phone just sort of fell out of my hand. In my head, Frank's words kept thrashing around. “That's what you wanted.”

It's not what I wanted. I wanted Frank to send out a couple of guidos, I wanted them to take that bastard Dighton by the scruff
of the neck, slap him around, slap him smart. Let him know—make him believe—that if he ever opened his mouth regarding what
had happened on a back road in Florida, permanent trouble is what he'd get, but I didn't want … I didn't want…

I wanted this.

I did. I could claim things any way I pleased—dial up Frank and scream my innocence—but inside myself, within the dark that
I owned, I knew the truth. I knew the kind of man Frank was. I knew with one phone call he could push the button that would
pull a trigger. When I went to him with my vague self—I want you to talk to him, I want you to explain things to him—what
was that but guinea-speak for rough business. An unpleasant chore. What was that but saying without saying “Make him dead
for me.”

And should that surprise me any? Really, when I thought about it, should I be so shocked at what I'd done? Years prior I had
killed a man. An accident. I hadn't meant to. But I had taken a pipe to his head. I had killed him to protect myself. Was
this any different? A guy shows up out of my past, wanting from me, and to get what he wants he would tear down everything
I'd built up over the years. Every single thing. What would that return me to? Being some poor black man with no prospects,
no chances, right back on the unforgiving streets of Harlem? Sowas what I did
now
any different than what I'd done then? Wasn't it just protecting me one more time?

Yes.

At that moment I became fully aware of myself, that for the things I wanted, if it came to it, if it had to … if I had to,
I could kill.

That was not the queer part. Honest: Back to the wall, knife at your throat, who wouldn't take a life in the name of self-preservation?

The queer part: I was fine with the concept. My breathing went regular. My heart slowed up. The knowledge of things, it didn't
frighten me. I wasn't ill to my gut or scared of myself anymore. I felt very liberated in the knowledge of that which I could
do.

L
ONGCHAMPS WAS ALL ABOUT FOOD
. Hearty food. House-cut steak and potatoes heaped up high on your plate. Longchamps was a restaurant on Madison and Fifty-ninth
where the tony people went to chow down and get greasy. Longchamps was where I invited Sid for some dinner. I had the New
York strip, and Sid went back and forth on the prime rib. I encouraged him to go all out. It was my treat. He got the T-bone.
Through our salads we talked some about a picture we'd both seen, whether or not we'd ever get to the moon, how much we hated
bossa nova. We both talked a lot, desperate to fill what we sensed would otherwise be unnaturally dead air.

Done with his salad, Sid pushed his plate away. He took a look all around the joint, said: “Nice restaurant, good food. And
you're paying. What's the occasion? What did I do to rate all this?”

“You've done a lot for me, Sid. You know that. If it weren't for you, I'd still be doing five minutes between strippers.”

He shrugged. “I doubt it, but thank you.”

Sid picked up his fork off his plate, twisted it around, gave it a good looking over, set it down again.

He said: “A condemned man eats a hearty meal.”

“Sid—”

“I'm a big boy, Jackie. I've been in the game a lot of years. I appreciate it, but you don't have to be nice about things.”

Okay. If he wanted it straight, no chaser, fine by me. “You know Chet Rosen?”

Sid nodded. “Took them longer than I figured to get to you.”

“I want you to know if it—”

“Yeah. I do know: If it weren't for me … You'll always be grateful for all I've done … It's business, right? It wouid've happened
sooner or later.”

To my ears he was sounding snide. I didn't care for the way snide sounded. I laid things out. “He can get me Sullivan.”

“And it's always been about that. You do the Sullivan show and you got no problems anymore. All the doors fly open, and you're
king of Hollywood.”

“I came to you, Sid. I came to you and you didn't want to do this for me.”

“No! It's not that I didn't—”

“I came to you first, and you wouldn't do it.”

“You're not ready.”

“Jesus, please, not again with that.”

Sid reached across the table, clamped me hard by the wrist, forced me to look at him. “You're still growing as an act, Jackie.
Yeah, believe it or not, long as you've been at it, you're still growing. You're good and you're only going to get better.
Better, more confident … That set, the one you wrote in San Francisco—”

Yanking my arm back from him: “I'm sick of waiting. Every time I think I've got something good, I see it melt away. Every
time I think I've got it made, it all falls to pieces. Not anymore. I'm not letting this get away from me. I'm not … Fran's
got her own show, for Christ's sake! ”

“Would you leave Fran? Quit comparing yourse—”

“When am I going to be ready? Huh? I have been ready since the first time I had to get down on hands and knees to clean up
someone else's dirt for the nickels they gave me. I've been ready since the first time I got ridden to the floor by the back
of someone's hand. I've been ready from the day I heard: ‘Nigger, go’ and ‘Nigger, fetch’ and ‘Nigger, why can't you be a
little bit smarter, nigger?’ I have been ready all my life. Ready to get out, to go on, to move up—”

“Ready to do whatever it takes.”

My mind real quick conjured up a picture of Dighton Spooner flattened on a sidewalk with a splatter of blood spiderwebbing
from his body. “Yes. Yes. To be respected? To be treated like a somebody? I never had that, Sid. Not from my father, not from
my so-called friends—”

“Not from Tammi? Fran? Not from me? All these years I haven't stood by you?”

And then I let fly what I'd held in so long: “When I was supposed to do Fran's show, when CBS was giving her grief about that
kiss, where were you, Sid? Off drying out somewhere because you couldn't keep yourself sober. That what you call standing
by me?”

My words came in a pack snarling and snapping. And you'd have thought, once said, no matter we were in public, match set to
fuse, things would have exploded. Instead, they stayed real calm.

“You're right, Jackie.” Sid was even in tone. Soft-spoken. The truth had always been with us. No denying it now, no fighting
it. If anything, Sid was glad to have our shared secret finally spoken aloud. “I should have been there for you, and … I let
myself fall off the wagon instead. I'm sorry for that, and I guess it doesn't matter that it was … or that I cleaned myself
up. I never pretended to be a perfect person, so if that's what this is about—”

“It's about you not doing your job. Drunk or dry, you didn't… you know? So don't sit there now and act like … whatever.”

Sure. Whatever.

Sid nodded. Just a little. He took up his napkin, wiped his hands. Not that they were messed with anything, it was just a
way of saying he was all done.

Reaching for his wallet: “Think I'll take a pass on dinner. Let me leave you something.”

“No… tab It's on me.”

“You don't have to buy me dinner to clear your guilt.”

“It's business, Sid. I don't feel guilty.”

He gave me a good looking-at. “No, I believe you don't.”

Sid got up, started out. He stopped, turned, said: “If things don't work out at William Morris …” That was all the more goodbye
I got from him.

Sid left.

The waiter brought around my steak. I ate it, then washed it down with a hunk of shortcake. When I was finished, all I felt
was full.

Funny how freeing a murder can be.

T
HE PAPERS WERE IN FRONT OF ME
. Papers. That's what they were called. Agency papers. They were contracts that signed me up to William Morris for two years.
There was nothing queer about that. Not really. I'd been with Sid longer and at the same rate, ten percent. But with Sid,
there were never any papers. No contracts. We just shook hands, and that was that. A shake of hands, then he was my agent,
and I was his—

“Something wrong, Jackie?”

“What's that?”

Chet pulled me away from my thoughts. He was there in the conference room at the WMA New York offices. It was Chet, a woman
who was a secretary or assistant or something, and that other agent I'd met back in Los Angeles who never had much to say
for himself.

Chet said: “Bottom of page eight, that's where you want to sign. On all the copies.”

I picked up the pack of papers, let them fall back down onto the table. “Pretty thick.”

“ things.” That came from the woman.

From the other agent: “All standard.”

“It's for your protection,” Chet offered.