No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (17 page)

So when I walked into the restaurant with Glenda and
Wayne and saw Vincent sitting beside my mother, I was pissed. I was
also trapped.

Uncle Vincent rose graciously for the introductions.
Taking my hand he said, for me alone, "I hope this doesn't
embarrass you."

I shrugged and moved to sit down. He held on.

"I'm getting old, very old, Tony. I wanted to
see you."

"OK," I said.

"It's all so long ago. I never meant to quarrel
with my brother. You gotta understand that."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Let's
sit down and get it over with."

I kissed my mother—she is entitled to her
trespasses—and sat on one side of her. Vincent was too quick for
me. He held out a chair for Glenda, an offer she couldn't refuse,
which left him sitting beside me.

Wayne whispered to Glenda over the antipasto about
how old Vincent looked. Glenda shushed him. That sort of thing
affected her sense of propriety the way the sound of a dentist's
drill hits my nervous system.

"That's OK," Vincent said. "That's OK.
I am an old, old man. Just like you are a young one. Neither one is
something to be ashamed of. Right, Tony?"

"How old?" Wayne naturally asked. Glenda
was scandalized.

"I'm eighty-three. Pretty good, huh?"

"Wowww!" Wayne was impressed. It took him a
while to digest a number that awesome. "Were you before TV?"

"Yes. And before lotsa other things."

"Like what?"

"Video games. Pictures with sound. Computers.
Air conditioning. Dishwashers."

"We don't have a dishwasher," Wayne said.
"I have to do them."

"A modest exaggeration," Glenda said.

"Did they have baseball? Did they have the
Brooklyn Dodgers? Tony saw the Brooklyn Dodgers lots of times,"
Wayne went on.

"Sure, they had baseball. I remember the very
first time I came here, it was 1919; that was the year the World
Series was fixed. "

"It was broken?" Wayne asked.

"No," the old man said seriously. "The
gamblers paid the players on the better team to lose."

"
Awhhh, baseball players wouldn 't do that,"
Wayne said, faced with a reality even more cynical than I usually
presented.

"Things was tougher back then, Wayne. A lot
tougher. That's something even Tony doesn't know, how tough it was.
Sports athletes did not make so much money like they do now. Listen
to this—you too, Tony, you might learn something. It took me three
years, working seven days a week, to get enough money to bring my
brother, Tony's father, from Sicily to over here."

When we were on dessert, Uncle Vincent learned over
to me and said, "Tony, look, I know you are not gonna take
anything from me. I tried before and you said no. So I don't want to
upset you. But I bought a little something for the boy. I would like
to give it to him, if I have your permission. Only with your
permission."

If there was a way to say no, I couldn't think of it.
Could he get Wayne less than the most expensive? A custom-strung Head
Graphite. The $120 was pocket change for Vincent. So  was the
dinner, which I found out was prepaid, so I couldn't even argue about
it.

Outside, he grabbed me for a private word again.

"Listen to me, Tony. If there is anything, ever
you need, you call me. No strings attached to it, no nothing. You
could send me a postcard, you don' even have to speak to me you dou'
Want to. You need help, I help. " His hand dug into my shoulder.
He kissed me on the cheek. His breath smelled like death sautéed in
garlic butter.

Then it was my mother's turn for a last word.

"Listen to me, Tony," she said. "Vincent,
he's an old man. He is your family. This thing, you don't talk to
him, that's wrong. "

"Pop was wrong?"

"I don't say that. I never said that .... Tony,
are you angry with me?"

"No, Mom, I love you." I gave her a hug and
a kiss. Vincent gave her a ride home in his Cadillac.
 

18
REOPEN

DETECTIVE SERGEANT BILL
Tillman
called me the next morning.

"I was just thinking of you," I said.

"Don't say things like that, please, now that
she's finally gone back to Nutley. "

"I'm sorry," I said. "How did that
story work out?"

"How did the story work out?" Tillman said.
"Let me say this about that. I had the story of the psychic and
the policeman mounted, covered in clear acrylic and framed. It is now
hanging on my wall. Let me quote something for you; the first
sentence reads: 'If you ever want to see a slick con, see the Psychic
who promises Pulitzers to reporters, promotions to Police Captains. .
. So, my friend, I owe you one, and it is now my pleasure and
privilege to pay. We got a break in the case."

"I'm on my way."

"
What it is, we busted a busboy from the
restaurant where Wood ate his last meal. It turns out that two guys
came into the place two nights before Wood was killed, asking about
him. Now the other thing I'm trying to work on is that DEA, Colombian
thing. That is a bitch. They are both claiming diplomatic immunity."

"Forget about them. How's tomorrow?"

"Fine," he said. I made flight
reservations, then called Christina.

I said "hello," and she said, "I don't
think I want to see you anymore."

"What's wrong?"

"It's fine for you. You come over and have a
nice time, then you go home to your—to Glenda. And I'm alone. I was
doing just fine without you."

The dream of falling, I'm told, is a very common
dream. I have it sometimes. I'm standing on the edge of a cliff, or a
bridge, or, most often, on the ledge of a roof. Suddenly, what is
beneath me is gone. A dream voice tries to scream, but its vocal
chords are paralyzed.

"Christina, we are so good together."

"That's what's wrong. You take me up so high.
Then I go down so low. If it wasn't so wonderful, it wouldn't matter.
It's fine for you, you go home. You belong to someone else, and if I
were her, I wouldn't like it."

There was no way I was going to tackle all of that on
the telephone.

"Listen to me a second," I said.

"No. I've made up my mind."

"
It's about your father; it's about the case."

"What? What is it?"

"I'd rather tell you in person."

"All right. But don't expect me to feel any
different when I see you."

Sure I didn't, and ran from the cab up her stairs.
She held herself stiffly, untouchable, unkissable. She led me into
the living room and offered me a chair that fit only one. She sat so
that the table was between us. The chess game she was playing didn't
matter at all. I was happy just to be in the same room with her.

"The Virginia police," I explained flatly,
"have come across some indication that your father was
deliberately murdered. It's thin, but I'm going down to see if we can
make something out of it."

Her eyes grew moist. She leaned forward. I told her
the few details I had.

"Tony, Tony," she said, and her hands
reached out. I moved around the table and her arms went around me.
Her head buried itself in my waist and her tears moistened both of
us.

"I hate them. Whoever they are, I hate them. Are
they going to get away with it? Are they?"

I looked down on her moist eyes and wet cheeks. "I'm
going to find whoever killed him, and I will do what can be done
about it." As I spoke I realized I had made a promise that
perhaps I should not have made. Because I would live up to it. Like a
kid who takes a dare, I hold the dumbest promises the most sacred. I
think that was how I ended up married. I said it. Since I said it, I
did it.

Silence framed the promise. Perhaps she understood
what I had just done. Perhaps not.

I took her hands in mine and lifted her gently. She
came up and into my arms. Our lips touched, her pain and anger became
lust and hunger, and the afterburners kicked in. "You're back,
you're back," she cried, as if she had thought me gone forever.
Or dead. There was no time to find a bed. We were on the couch and
half our clothes still on us. Her legs opened and wrapped around my
hips as if that was the only place in the world for me to be. It was.
I entered her, desperate and helpless as the search for truth.

"I love you," I said, just before the
orgasm took me. It was roaring and full of darkness. "I love
you, I love you," I heard her say through the storm.

And when it's open, when you've got it, when it's
all yours,
When nobody else in all the world
is where you are,
When your arms have really
gone around something,
When your thighs know
all the answers to all the questions,
Why is
there always one bead of sweat that doesn't come from
            
either of your faces?

A great well of laughter started deep down below my
bowels and came bubbling up as we lay tangled in clothes and limbs.
Part of it, sheer joy. I was high as a cocaine kite in love with the
woman in my arms, and I had a happy and contented home with a woman
as good as any it has been my privilege to know.

It was a conflict so old that the jokes about it
precede the written word. Twenty thousand years, from clubs to
computers, and the only intelligent commentary that I had ever heard
about this situation came from Tommy Moe Ratt, a burlesque comic who
stood five feet four, with jowls that hung to his chin and
basset-hound eyes. "Please, please, puleeeese," he begged
Enid, the blonde he did his routines with. She, six feet one without
her heels, Death Valley cleavage and legs that came up almost to his
jowls, whined, "What about your wife, Tommy?" Tommy
reassured Enid, "We can start without her. "

Then we did it again. She didn't understand my
laughter, but she knew how to touch me clear through.
 

19
PIGEONS

"
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT
?"

"Walter LeRoy Johnson," Bill Tillman said,
pulling out the tile, "a.k.a. LeRoy Johns, John Walters, John
Waterson, Walter LeRoy, Roy Walters and LeRoy Watson, has been
married under each of those names. He is prolific, but not
imaginative." He looked up and said, "That's not in the
file, that was a comment," then continued to read. "Male,
black, sixty-seven, hair black, eyes brown. A record going back over
forty years for nonsupport and bigamy. His latest warrant, the one we
picked him up on, is from Seminole, Texas, on a complaint from a Mrs.
Althea Johns. There are outstanding warrants from Alabama, Arizona
and two from next door in West Virginia."

"Do you see him," I said to prick at his
cool, "as an unfortunate caricature?"

"Yes, I do," he replied, forever unruffled,
"not of the so-called shif'less kneegro, but of the cultural
deficiencies of po' southe'n trash of any color. A vanishing breed as
economic and educational standards rise."

We exchanged bland smiles.

"If I may continue with something pertinent . .
."

"Please," I said.

"Apparently," he said, shuffling through
the file, "no, not apparently; in fact, I have a sworn affidavit
here to prove it. A Mr. and Mrs. Clayton Delaney of Seminole, the
employers of Mrs. Althea Johns, were visiting relations in Casanova,
just over the line in Farquier County. They stopped for dinner at
Scotch 'n' Sirloin, Mr. Johnson's place of employment, and while he
was collecting their dishes, recognized him as the man who had run
out on their domestic employee, Mrs. Johns. They said nothing to the
suspect, but upon returning to their place of residence, they duly
informed the said Althea Johns. Mrs. Delaney apparently felt it was
her duty."

He turned a page. "Mrs. Delaney was so
sympathetic . . .that's not in the report, that's from a conversation
. . . to the plight of abandoned wives in general that she retained
an  attorney for the complainant, who sent a subpoena, etc. etc.
You can see it if you want."

"Thanks, I've seen them."

"
Well, they called to follow up," he said,
closing the file. "Both the attorney and the employer. So we dug
the subpoena out of the bottom of the file, where it was rightly
buried below lots more urgent business, and went to pick up Walter
Johnson. Of course, once we picked him up, we did an automatic check.

"I don't know whether you know it, but we've
recently gone statewide on the computer, with a federal hookup to
boot. I got it in an anticrime grant a few years back. Sometimes it
works real well. With D's, M's, W's and P's it works particularly
well. On the other hand, if your name starts with F or B your record
will never catch up with you. Unfortunately for Walter LeRoy, he used
all those W names, and the computer loved that.

"The arresting officer, Samuel D. Culpepper, who
is, off record, a regular old-time red-neck cracker, gets the
printout and goes and does an almost authentic imitation of a
southern sheriff. 'You in a heap o' trouble, boy.' . . . Has anyone
ever considered forbidding peace officers watching TV?...According to
Culpepper, the prisoner began to