Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (16 page)

‘Yes, sir,’ Jinx said. That’s right.’

‘How big a pay-roll?’

‘Pretty big …’

‘Well, how big … ?’

‘Pretty big…’ Jinx said again, looking at me for help. He was more nervous than ever. He had been awed by Reece and you can imagine how he was being awed by the Inspector. I was just going to let him dangle for a while. Maybe this experience would help season him. He needed seasoning very badly.

‘Now, cut this out,’ the Inspector said disagreeably. ‘Where is the pay-roll? What place?’

‘Well…’ Jinx said.

The Inspector turned to me. ‘Is this the bird you were talking about?’

‘Yes, sir. That’s the bird.…’

‘I thought you told me he had this pay-roll spotted.’ He turned back to Jinx. ‘I thought you had this pay-roll spotted?’

‘Tell ’im,’ Jinx said to me, desperately. ‘Tell ’im.…’

‘Tell me what? What the hell is this?’ the Inspector asked roughly.

Poor Jinx. There was torment in his face, and I knew that if I let him dangle any longer he would say the wrong thing and probably louse up the whole works. There’s a friend of yours here, Inspector,’ I said. ‘Maybe I better let him tell you what this is.…’

‘Morning, Inspector…’ Mandon’s voice said. The Inspector and Reece whirled. Mandon was standing in the bedroom door, smiling, his heavy eyebrows raised high, his forehead wrinkled. He looked all right to me. He didn’t seem too awed now. ‘Put your gun away, Lieutenant,’ he said quietly. I looked and saw that Reece did have a gun in his hand, but I was more surprised to discover that the toothpick was missing.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Cherokee?’ the Inspector asked. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘It
was
a conference with my clients until you interrupted.…’

‘Clients?’

‘Clients,’ Mandon said. ‘But as long as you’re here, let’s put it on a friendly basis. Tell the Lieutenant to stash that gun.…’ The Inspector nodded to Reece, who unwillingly put the gun back in his pocket. Mandon sounded all right too. He wasn’t at all awed. ‘It does sometimes happen, Inspector,’ he continued, coming into the room, ‘that I can have a conference with my clients without coming to your jail. Surprising as that is …’

‘What the hell is this?’ the Inspector growled.

Don’t start making noises in your throat yet, you thieving son-of-a-bitch, I wanted to tell him. You’re not hurt yet. I haven’t even started turning the crank yet. You wait…

‘We can save a lot of wear and tear and time if you’ll sit down and listen,’ Mandon said.

‘I can listen from here,’ the Inspector said. ‘What the hell is this?’ he asked, spreading his feet. ‘Go on – start talking!’

‘Later…’ Mandon said, smiling. ‘I’ll talk later. First, I want to refresh your memory so that when the time does come to talk, we’ll all be talking about the same thing.…’ He moved to the end table where we had put the recording machine, and lifted the top and clicked the switch. The motor hummed and the turntable started revolving, spinning the record that already had been spindled. ‘Come a little closer,’ Mandon said, lifting the pick-up arm, waiting for the speaker tubes to get hot. ‘No sense in making this too loud.…’ I’m going to have to send this guy flowers and enclose a penitent note, I told myself. He’s a hell of a workman. He’s a real professional: sharp and icy. ‘No sense in having the neighbors call the police.…’

The Inspector and Reece stared at each other. Reece’s face was blank, but the Inspector’s was grim and purposeful. Now he knew what the hell this was. Not exactly, not in detail, but he knew. He looked at me vindictively, but this time it was almost a pleasure, this time I was not frightened. There was nothing red and twisting in my stomach now, and it was hard for me to believe there ever had been. I tried to remember how I had felt then, so I could compare it with how I felt now, but I couldn’t; it was like trying to remember last year’s toothache, you not only couldn’t remember the ache, you couldn’t even remember the tooth.

‘… And pay attention now,’ Mandon was saying. He lowered the pick-up arm on to the record and there were a couple of revolutions of scratching and then the voices were heard, slightly distorted, and he gestured for Jinx to make the adjustment. Jinx moved quickly to the machine and tuned it, and now the voices came out of the speaker clearly and normally, a little softer than normal. The Inspector looked at Mandon, who was smiling peacefully, and then at Reece, whose eyes were wide in surprise, and then at me. I could see the hardness coming into his face, and the eyelids flickering as the venom damned up behind them. Pay attention to the record, I wanted to say to him. Listen to that sales talk you’re giving me on Arizona. Listen to me paying you off, you thieving son-of-a-bitch. Listen to that crunching sound, Inspector. You know what that is, don’t you? Of course you know. It’s your nose in the wringer.…

Suddenly his hand darted inside his coat and yanked out his service revolver. ‘Get your hands up!’ he barked. We raised our hands. Reece had his gun out again and was backing around to cover us. The Inspector charged at the recording machine and snatched at the pick-up arm with his left hand, trying to pull it off; but the only thing that came off was his hand, sliding down the arm, past the needle. He uttered an involuntary snort of pain and when he looked at his hand it was full of blood where the needle had laid the palm open, as neatly as if it had been done with a razor blade. He grabbed the record off the spindle with his bloody hand and banged it against the machine, trying to break it, and then realized it was non-breakable, and doubled it against his body and stuck it under his belt.

‘You filthy bastards!’ he said. ‘Frisk ’em, Reece!’

Reece started frisking Jinx.

‘You didn’t hear the best part of the record,’ Mandon said. ‘The best part is where you conspire to hijack a pay-roll.’

‘You filthy bastards,’ he said, glancing at his bloody hand.

Reece started frisking me. ‘We got no guns,’ I said.

‘They’re clean,’ Reece said.

‘Where are the guns?’ the Inspector said.

‘In the bedroom,’ I said. ‘We got no use for guns now.…’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘Get ’em,’ he said to Reece.

‘Whereabouts in the bedroom?’ Reece asked me.

‘Go find ’em,’ I said.

He swung at my head with the barrel of his gun, but I threw up my arm and took the blow between my wrist and elbow. I could feel the pain in my ankles, but I was still not frightened, only mad.

‘Lay off,’ the Inspector said. ‘We don’t want the coroner to find any bruises on ’em.…’

Reece walked into the bedroom.

‘Get over there against the wall,’ the Inspector said.

‘You crazy son-of-a-bitch.…’ Holiday wailed at me.

‘Move!’ the Inspector said. ‘This is what I should’a done in the first place.…’

This had gone far enough. I looked at Mandon. ‘I wouldn’t, Charlie, if I were you,’ Mandon said. ‘That record you got there is only one of several we have entrusted to reliable friends. If they don’t hear from us within the hour that all is well, they have been instructed to play the records for certain groups in town that you might not be able to reach – the Lake Front Club, the Rotarians, the Lions, the Kiwanians – even the churches.…’ The Inspector’s jaw sagged a little. ‘Now, Charlie,’ Mandon continued persuasively, ‘there’s no sense in pulling this thing down on top of us. Everything’s been all right for a long time, and it’ll continue to be all right if you’ll just be reasonable. All we want is a little co-operation.’

‘We want a trifle more than that,’ I said. ‘Fourteen hundred dollars and eighteen hundred dollars make thirty-two hundred dollars,’ I said to the Inspector. ‘You got thirty-two hundred dollars of my money. I want it back.’

‘Oh, God,’ Mandon said. ‘Can’t you let well enough alone?’

‘Goddamn it, it’s my dough,’ I said. ‘I want it.…’

He jumped at me, grabbing me by the shoulders. ‘Will you lay off?’ he yelled. ‘Later. Later.’

Reece came in with my two automatics. ‘Here they are,’ he said.

The Inspector didn’t notice. He was looking at his hand. The blood was dripping on the carpet. ‘I ought to get this tended to,’ he said.

He wasn’t roaring now. There wasn’t so much venom damned up behind his eyes now. Colossus, eh? Well, what have you got when you castrate a Colossus?

‘Go in the bathroom and get a towel for him,’ I said to Reece. ‘First thing you know, I’ll have to buy a new carpet for this place.

I
WAS SITTING IN
her car in front of the house, not quite in front of the house, down the street a little, under the limbs of a breadfruit tree which reached far out beyond the kerbing, listening to a Berigan record, waiting for her to come out. The meditation had been over for ten minutes more or less, and the disciples had left, some walking, some riding; but the lights were still on in the house and on the sign in the yard. There was no sight of the girl with the white face and the black hair. The Berigan record ended, and another one started, and after a subtle eight-bar introduction that whispered to my memory, an idiot announcer shouted that this was Mugsy Spanier’s ‘I’ve Found a New Baby’, as if those trumpet inflections and great vibrato needed additional identification. But you simpleton, you loud fool, why call it Mugsy’s record, peerless as he is? Can you not also hear the phrases of Tesch leaping at you, and the rattle of the incomparable Condon’s banjo, and the wail of Mezz’s tenor sax, inspired as always, and the piano of Sullivan, the King, graciously in the background? And who else, who else? Krupa for one and somebody else and somebody else once I had known, but that was a long time ago, in ’28. Pinky Lee had discovered that record, Pinky Lee who loved jazz and Spalding saddle shoes; and his room at the frat house, second floor rear, had shook and trembled to its beat until I, at last convinced of its aphrodisiacal magic, swiped it and traded it to the girl who waited on tables at the Mecca, the girl from Morgantown…

The lights in the front room went out and the light on the sign in the front yard went out. This was what I had been waiting for, and I leaned over and cut off the radio in the middle of that impeccable solo by Sullivan, and for the blink of an eye the echo of his rich piano harmony vibrated above the floorboards. Then I saw her coming out the front door, this is why I was here; I had to satisfy myself about the perfume. But the images in my mind were Pinky Lee and the other guys in his room and the phonograph we took turns winding and the girl from Morgantown: goddamn that radio, I wasn’t listening for anything in particular, I just turned it on to kill time, and this was what I had heard. And this was what it had dug up. Get out of my mind, you ghosts, I told them, I’ll remember you later.… She was coming across the porch, down the steps, down the walkway to the pavement, down the pavement to the car, hatless and coatless; and I got out and stood with the car door open. In the pale luminosity of the sky that came through the limbs and leaves of the bread-fruit tree I could see her white face and her black hair, and then the perfume got through, the smell of
Huele de Noche
, which was only in my imagination, which was only a hallucination, but which was more real because of that, and the ghosts of the campus curled and faded before the rush of a memory even more ancient…

‘Can I give you a lift?’ I heard myself asking.

‘I didn’t know you were here,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you come in?’

‘I didn’t get here in time. I haven’t been here very long,’ I said.

‘Is that the real reason?’ she asked.

‘You mean it isn’t good enough?’

‘Well, since you and the Master don’t agree in principle …’

‘That wouldn’t keep me from coming in,’ I said. ‘I hope I’m not that narrow. I’ll come some night. I’m willing to be convinced. I hope I’m not interfering with anything by coming…’

‘You’re not.’

‘I’d have called you, but I didn’t know where to call.’

‘I’d have told you, but your friend was so anxious to tear you away.’

‘That’s why I came back alone.’

She smiled, inclining her head at the car. ‘Would you like to drive?’

‘You drive,’ I said. I stepped back and she got in the car, sliding under the wheel. I got in and closed the door, and she started the motor.

‘Where can I drop you tonight?’ she asked.

‘Anywhere,’ I said. Tonight I got no place to go. Tonight, I’m all alone. I ditched the clunk – lucky me.’

She smiled at me again, putting the car in gear, sliding it away. ‘I don’t think he liked me. …’ she said.

‘He had other things on his mind that night,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t you. How was the meditation?’

‘Good. I do wish you’d come with me sometime. We could have an interesting discussion, talking about your theory of the fourth dimension.’

I looked at her. ‘I might as well tell you something right now,’ I said. ‘That was just conversation. I don’t know anything about the fourth dimension.’

‘Ah-h-h-h …’ she said, meaning I should not be so modest.

‘On the level,’ I said. ‘That was just something I’d read somewhere.’

‘Well, you certainly sounded like an authority. …’

‘I take after my grandfather. He specialized on being an authority on things he knew nothing about. I inherited his inferiority complex. Talk big, pretend you know everything… I was only trying to seem different from the average guy you meet. I thought that talking about anything as esoteric as the fourth dimension would sort of set me apart from the average guy.’

She was silent for a thoughtful moment and then asked: ‘Was that just conversation about the perfume, too?’

‘Yes,’ I said, laughing. ‘That was just conversation about the perfume, too. I didn’t smell any perfume.’ I was smelling it now. …

‘You’re a terrific actor,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to watch my step around you. …’

‘I was only trying to arouse your interest. …’

‘You did – you most definitely did. I thought I’d heard all the approaches, but that one was brand new. …’

‘Wonderful,’ I said.

We passed the drug store where, the other time I was with her, Jinx had wanted to leave the car, and got into some traffic for the first time, from a three-way intersection, most of it moving toward town, towards the puff-cotton clouds whose lower edges were stained with the colored lights from the business district directly below them.