The Porkchoppers (15 page)

He doesn't understand, Kelly thought, staring back at his father. He thinks that there's really more to it than I've told him, that there's something devious about what I want to do that I don't really understand. Or am not aware of. He doesn't understand that it's partly guilt and partly my need to be respected and liked and loved by a few people, but not too many, because I don't think I could handle that. And wait'll I tell him how I'm going to do it.

“So what do you think you might do, son, go into one of the—what do they call them—the helping professions? Social work, teaching, something like that?”

“No, I'm not wild about kids and I've known a few social workers. A lot of them get bitter after a while and they get all mixed up with their jargon.”

“Well, what have you decided on?”

Kelly took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “I'm going to become a cop, chief.”

Cubbin sat bolt upright in his chair and grabbed at the brandy bottle. “Good Jesus Godalmighty, you don't mean it?”

“Yes,” Kelly said. “I'm pretty sure I do.”

“Jesus. My son, the fuzz.”

“Your son, the pig.”

Cubbin looked at Kelly carefully. “This isn't just some childhood ambition that you've decided to realize a little late, is it?”

Kelly shook his head. “My attitude toward cops is typically American.” He touched his left eye. “Another inch or so up and I'd have lost this at Chicago.”

Cubbin nodded and then said, “It's the hard way to do what you want to do, isn't it, become the village wise man?”

“You've got it, chief,” Kelly said, “it's probably the hardest way there is.”

Two months later Kelly Cubbin joined the Metropolitan Police force in Washington, D. C, at the peak of its recruiting drive for college graduates, a drive that petered out a little less than two years later when Washington decided that it really didn't need any more smart kid cops.

But when Kelly joined they put his picture in the paper and after training assigned him to a beat that was just back of the Hilton and took in most of Columbia Road. It had once been a toney enough white neighborhood, but by the time Kelly arrived the fancy grocery stores had closed, a once-popular nightclub had folded, and one of the movie houses had been torn down and the other ran Mexican films and called itself a teatro instead of a theater. And everybody began putting special locks on their doors and heavy metal screens over their windows.

Kelly tried. He taught himself Spanish and because he was nearly as good a mimic as his father he was speaking it quickly, hamming it up at first on purpose, getting a few giggles from the youngsters that he talked to on the street and patient instruction from the older people.

It took him longer to get an in with the blacks. But after his partner discovered that Kelly wasn't interested in splitting what little juice the neighborhood provided, things got better. His partner was Private R. V. Emerson, a black, sad, tough cop with five kids who passed the word that Kelly was about half human and nobody had better mess with him.

The people in the neighborhood never trusted Kelly completely, but they slowly accepted him, and some of them even liked him—as much as they could ever like any cop. And after a while they began to turn to him with some of their problems because they found that his advice was usually sound and it was always free. And finally he became the neighborhood's unofficial ombudsman, which was as close as he ever got to becoming what he wanted to be, the village wise man.

He liked it. He even liked being pure cop but not well enough, at least not well enough to satisfy the annual review and evaluation board, one of whose members asked him: “You know what they call you, Cubbin?”

“Who?”

“The guys you work with. They call you Mother Cubbin. Now what do you think of that?”

“Not much.”

“It don't bother you?”

“No,” Kelly said, “it doesn't bother me.”

“Do you really like being a cop, Cubbin? I mean really like it?”

“I like it very much. Why?”

“Because you sure don't act like a cop.”

Three days later he was placed on what they called administrative leave. Only a few of the residents of the neighborhood back of the Hilton ever asked Private R. V. Emerson what had happened to his ex-partner, “You know, that white kid cop who was always stickin his nose in other folks's business.”

It was eleven o'clock in the morning and Kelly Cubbin sat in a chair and drank coffee and watched his father sleep. He had been watching him for nearly a quarter of an hour and thinking: at least you don't hate him. Whether you love him or just pity him probably isn't too important. You've come to know his posturing and his playacting and what they cover up. My father, my elder brother who fell in love with the sound of applause at an early age and spent the rest of his life looking for it in all the wrong places. I didn't fly up here to be consoled by you because the only way you can offer that is from the depths of your checkbook. I flew up here because the village got rid of its wise man who wasn't quite smart enough to hold on to his job. Do you need a wise man, chief?

Donald Cubbin rolled over in his bed and groaned. He was awake and wishing that he weren't. He had to make it to the bathroom and vomit, but it seemed too far away. A mile too far.

“You awake, chief?” Kelly said.

“Kelly?”

“Right here.”

Cubbin groaned again. “I'm dying, son.”

“Let me help you up.”

Kelly helped his father to sit up on the edge of the bed. “Little queasy?”

Cubbin nodded, not trusting himself to speak. “Can you make it to the john?” Kelly said.

Cubbin pushed himself up from the bed. He weaved toward the bathroom almost staggering. He made it to the toilet just as it came up, great wet gobs of it. Cubbin hated the mess that his stomach rejected but he forced himself to look at it because he knew that the sight of it would make more come up and the quicker that happened, the better he would feel.

When he came out of the bathroom a few minutes later he was pale and shaky but the nausea seemed to have gone.

“I've got a little medicine for you, chief,” Kelly said and handed his father a tall glass that contained a thick, white liquid. Cubbin took the glass with both hands and raised it to his mouth where its rim clattered against his teeth before he got the first swallow down.

The drink was part cream, part brandy, part crème de menthe, two raw eggs, and a jigger of vodka. It was Fred Mure's invention and after he drank half of it, Cubbin eased himself down into a chair and leaned back, waiting for the alcohol to make it stop hurting.

After a few moments he took another cautious swallow and sighed. That was better. The shakes were going. The queasiness had departed. He looked at his son. “What are you doing here?”

“I came in last night.”

“Did I—uh—”

“We talked a little and you went to bed.”

Cubbin nodded. “I don't remember.”

“You'd had a few.”

“I remember that goddamned TV program though.”

“I heard about that this morning.”

Cubbin finished the rest of his drink. “Where's the other one?” he said. “I need two.”

Kelly crossed to the dresser, picked up the other drink that Fred Mure had provided, and handed it to his father. “It's none of my business, but you're hitting it a little hard these days, aren't you?”

“Well, you saw me last night. And this morning. There's no reason to lie to you.”

“I just thought I'd mention it.”

Cubbin shrugged. He was feeling better. Much better. “I'd be an ass to say that I can handle it so I'll just say that I can make it. Just barely. It's not this bad every day. Not quite. Not yet anyhow.”

“It's your liver.”

“That's right, kid, it's
my
liver. What're you doing here anyway?”

“I got fired.”

Cubbin looked at his son. Be careful now, he told himself. Don't say it wrong. “You did, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Does it bother you?”

“A little.”

“You want it back?”

“My job?”

“Yes.”

“I don't think so.”

“What happened?”

“They didn't much care for my attitude. My arrest record wasn't too good. Little things like that.” Kelly grinned. “It's not important.”

“Do you think you did a good job?”

“I think so, but they don't, and that's what matters.”

“No it doesn't, kid. If you think you did a good job, that's all that matters. Take it from me.”

“Sure, chief.”

“Got any plans?”

“No. Not really.”

Cubbin's mind worked swiftly. It could still do that for about twenty minutes a day when the alcohol had dulled the pain but not the mind. He sometimes told himself that twenty minutes were all anybody needed. Most people don't think for even five minutes a day, so if you really make use of the time, you're a quarter of an hour ahead of almost everybody else.

“I got an idea, kid.”

“What?”

“Well, this election's going to be just a little bit—uh— shitty, you know?”

“I think so.”

“I could use you.”

“To do what?”

“Oh, sort of follow me around and remember what's said and what's not said.”

“I thought Fred did that.”

“Fred's not smart enough for some of these deals. That's one. Two is they won't let him sit in on some of them. But nobody can object to my son and something tells me that I might need a witness.”

“You're in trouble?”

Cubbin finished the second drink before he answered. Do it just right, he told himself. Underplay it. He nodded at his son and said, “That's right; I'm in a little trouble.”

“Do you really need me, chief, or are you just bullshitting me?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you're bullshitting me,” Kelly said, “but I'll do it anyway.”

14

Indigo Boone, the man who knew how to steal elections, lived in a third-story, six-room apartment on Sixtieth Street just across the Midway from the University of Chicago. It was still called the Midway because that's what it had been when they had held the World's Columbian Exposition there back in 1893. Later the city had turned it into a park of sorts with a bridle path and for a time they had even flooded sections of it in winter to form ice-skating rinks.

But all that had been a long time ago when the neighborhood had been one of the choicer places to live in Chicago, much favored by intellectuals who liked the university atmosphere. Now it was just another black neighborhood that was not quite yet a slum.

But Indigo Boone kept his place up nice because he owned the building and he thought he should set an example for other landlords. Boone had bought the building in 1946 with money that he had made in the Manila black market. He had bought it through a white attorney because the people who had owned it then would have refused to sell to a black. But all that was more than a quarter of a century ago and Boone had been living in his own apartment in his own building for nearly fifteen years now.

He was not a man who liked to move much. He had been born in New Orleans in 1921 and had grown up in the French Quarter on Dauphine Street where he had had to hustle if he wanted to survive without resorting to steady work. He most probably would still be in New Orleans if he hadn't been drafted in early 1942 and assigned to a black quartermaster outfit that ended the war in Manila with Boone as its top sergeant.

He had made money, a lot of it, on the Manila black market just after the war ended and before the records could get straightened out, selling truckloads of cigarettes, blankets, powdered eggs, Spam, and sometimes even the trucks themselves.

When he had returned to the States he had headed for Chicago because he had it on what he considered to be good authority that the economic, political, and social climate there would be to the liking of a man of his tastes and ability. Chicago hadn't disappointed Indigo Boone any more than it had ever disappointed any of the hard, fast, smart hustlers who flocked to it.

Boone had started small in Chicago, first investing a fair amount of capital in several white-occupied apartment buildings, including the one on Sixtieth Street, and then buying into a small construction company. Boone knew little or nothing about the construction business, but he knew almost all there was to know about payoffs and bribes and kickbacks and so his business began to flourish with the collective blessing of various city employees who bought new cars or had their kids' teeth straightened thanks to Boone's generosity.

Indigo Boone also went into politics, starting small and mildly meek at the precinct level and gradually working his way up the Democratic party ladder, largely by doing those onerous chores that nobody else wanted to fool with, until he was now something of a minor power with excellent connections downtown.

Prior to 1960 Boone had helped steal a few elections, but it had been mostly minor stuff that had involved no more than sending some extra Democratic state legislators down to Springfield. But on the night of the election of 1960 the word came down to Boone that they would need a few additional Kennedy votes. Boone had found them here and there, doing what he regarded as no more than his usual workmanlike job. But as the night wore on, additional word came down that more and more Kennedy votes were needed, that in fact a whole raft of them was needed, that indeed a deluge of Chicago Kennedy votes was desperately needed to offset the downstate trend.

Boone found them. At least he found a lot of them and some said most. He invented new ways to filch precincts right out from under the noses of the Republican poll watchers. He improvised foolproof means of inflating the actual Democratic vote. He fell back on time-honored methods and voted the lame, the sick, the halt and the dead. He even, some said, managed to corrupt the voting machines themselves. He sped from polling place to polling place that night and early morning in a squad car, its siren moaning hoarsely, its top light flashing, giving counsel, advice, and instructions to the party faithful and buying what was needed from those who were not so faithful, peeling off fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills from a roll that one prejudiced observer later claimed was “as big as a big cantaloupe.”