City Primeval

19

SANDY WOKE UP lying on her side, feeling Clement cuddled close to her and something hard pressing against her bare behind.

She said, “Is that for me, or you have to go to the bathroom?”

Clement didn’t answer. She hadn’t heard him come in last night. When she shifted to her back, turning her head to look at the Oklahoma Wildman, he made a face with his eyes still closed and said, “Get off me.”

“Pardon me, did I touch you or something?… You have a big time last night?” No answer. “Well, I was somewhere, too, if you think I was sitting home.”

Clement’s little-boy face looked red and swollen; his breath smelled of sour-mash whiskey.

“The wildman all tuckered out? You big shit, where’d you go?”

Clement opened his eyes, blinked a few times to focus, seeing noon sunlight in the window and Sandy’s frizzy hair sticking out golden from the pillow. He said, “I went to that place out Wood’ard… took me back home it was so good.” Clement’s mouth was partly open against the pillow and he talked as though he had a toothache or had just eaten Mexican peppers.

Sandy said, “What?… What place?”

He worked his mouth to loosen the stickiness. “Line up your Albanian, I’m ready for him now,” Clement said. “You all be sitting there when I walk in. You introduce us… we’ll look into this business.”

“What place?”

“Uncle Deano’s.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sandy said, “he’s Albanian, he doesn’t like Country. He likes disco.”

Clement stared at his little partner, waiting for what she said to make sense.

Finally he said, “Honey?… I want to talk to this man, I don’t want to dance with him.”

“Well, what if he doesn’t want to go there?”

“Hey, aren’t you with the good hands people?” Clement inched his own hand over as he said it and caught Sandy between her slender legs. “Aren’t you?”

“Cut it out.”

“Why, what’s this?” Clement closed his eyes as he felt around. “Whiskers? You growing whiskers on me?”

“That hurts.”

“Yeah, but hurts good, don’t it? Huh? How ’bout right there? Feel pretty good?”

Sandy rolled toward him, pushing out her hips, then stopped. “I ain’t gonna do it less you brush your teeth.”

“Come on,” Clement said, “we don’t have to kiss. Let’s just do it.”

Clement laid around the rest of the day while he thought and stared out at Motor City. Sandy sat at the desk to write a letter to her mother in French Lick, Indiana, that began “Dear Mom, The weather has been very warm for October, but I don’t mind it a bit as I hate cold weather. Brrrr.” And stopped there. She rattled the ballpoint pen between her front teeth until Clement told her to, goddamn-it, cut it out.

She went over and turned on the TV and said, “Hey, Nashville on the Road … my God, anybody ever tell you you look like Marty Robbins? You and him could be twin brothers.” Clement didn’t answer. Sandy turned to him again after a few minutes and said, “That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Marty goes, ‘Would you like to sing another song for us?’ And Donna Fargo-you hear her?-she goes, ‘I can’t hardly pass up an offer like that.’ What offer? Marty didn’t offer her nothing.” Clement was staring at her, hard. Sandy got dressed and left the apartment without saying another word.

What Clement thought about was a hundred thousand dollars and the possibility of prying it out of Carolyn Wilder. He heard himself saying to her, “Here’s how it is. You give me the hunnert or else I send the cops this notebook, has your phone number written in the judge’s hand, the initials of your company… Wilder, Sultan and Fine… I tear a few pages out of the book so on the lefthand page facing your number and all’re these amounts of money, payments, dates and arrows pointing over to you. What do you think?” She had hung up the phone. That’s what she thought. She was a tough lady. She didn’t get wimpy or act scared for no good reason. She listened and then hung up the phone.

Sandy came back after a couple of hours and glanced at him as she turned on the television. He didn’t even look at her, just continued to stare out the window.

Clement thought and thought and finally-with the sun going down and the tall glass stacks of the Renaissance Center turning silver-he said to himself, Jesus Christ, you think too much. That’s the problem, you dumb shit. Thinking.

What was the quickest, surest way to get money off a person? Stick a gun in their mouth and ear back the hammer. Your money or your life, partner. Hell, that’s the way it’s always been done throughout history and around the world. Take it and git.

If Carolyn won’t go for the con, shit, it was a dumb idea anyway, knock her on her ass, straddle her and let her look into the barrel of a Walther-except, shit, he’d gotten rid of it.

Well, some other gun then.

Which reminded him, he’d have to go shopping before meeting Sandy’s Albanian. Go in some nigger bar and make a purchase. He thought of Marcus Sweeton and said to himself, no, stay away from Mr. Sweety for the time being. Sweety had hard bark on him, but he had been messing with dope lately and he wasn’t sure where Sweety stood on matters of trust and not fucking an old buddy. Who could you trust these days? He looked over at Sandy curled up on the sofa watching Mike Douglas. Bless her heart. Clement told her to go ahead and watch her program, he’d fix supper.

They dug into fried steaks breaded country-style and served with Stove-Top Dressing and Miller High Life in the dining-L while the city outside turned dark and began to take on its evening glitter. It was Clement’s favorite time of the day. He said, “All right, I’m paying full attention now. Tell me about Albanians.”

Sandy said, “Okay, you know where like Italy is, how it sticks down? Albania is over on the other side of it.”

Clement thought, Jesus Christ-But he had asked for this and he said, “Yeah?” shoveling Stove-Top into his mouth and sounding all ears.

“The Albanians that live here,” Sandy said, “are mostly-you’ll get a kick out of this-the really hardass ones that wouldn’t live under the Turks or the Communists or somebody. See, so they came here.”

“What’s hardass about ’em?”

“Well, like Skender says, it’s like if you do something to his brother you’re doing it to him. I mean they really stick up for kin if anything happens to them. Like a husband beats up his wife? She goes home, tells her dad. The dad goes looking for his son-in-law and shoots him.”

“Is that right?”

“But then the brother of the son-in-law shoots the dad and the dad’s son, the brother of the guy’s wife, shoots the brother of the husband. And sometimes they have to get somebody from Yugoslavia, where most of the hardass ones are, to come over and settle it, it gets so mixed up and confusing with everybody shooting each other.”

“Where’n the hell are we,” Clement said, “Detroit or East Tennessee?”

“A bunch of ’em live in Hamtramck mixed in with all the Polacks,” Sandy said. “Some others live out in the suburbs, Farmington Hills, all over. There’re more Albanians here than any place in the United States, but they still have these old ways. Skender says it’s called besa, like the Code of the West.”

“The what?”

“Besa. It means like a promise. Like, I give you my word. Or sometimes he refers to it as ‘the Custom.’ ”

“Shit,” Clement said, “how come I never heard of ’em?”

“Skender says, ‘If someone kills my brother and I do nothing, then I am nothing. I can never’-how’d he say it?-‘put my face out among my people.’ ”

“That’s the way he talks?”

“Listen, they’re very serious. They get into one of these blood feuds, they have to hide out to stay alive. That’s why Skender has the secret room. He built it himself four years ago.”

“I think he’s giving you a bunch of shit,” Clement said, digging into his dressing.

“Really.” Sandy was wide-eyed. “I saw the room again. It’s hidden down in the basement behind a cinderblock wall that doesn’t even have a door.”

“Yeah? How you get into it?”

“He turns this switch that’s like part of the furnace, up above it, and the wall-you hear this motor hum-and part of the wall comes open, real slow. That’s where the safe is… with forty thousand dollars inside.”

“He show it to you?”

“He told me it’s in there.”

“Uh-huh,” Clement said. “Well, if it’s a secret room, what’d he even let you in there for?”

Sandy got up and went into the kitchen. She came back with her purse. “I’ve been trying to tell you I went out with him last night, but you were into your thinking time. Who am I? I’m not important. Well, take a look at this, buddy.” Sandy brought a small blue-felt box out of her purse, opened it and placed it next to Clement’s beer glass-where the overhead light would reflect off the diamond in tiny glints of color.

“Skender wants to marry me.”

Clement chewed, swallowed, took a sip of beer and sat back with the ring pinched between his fingers.

“What’s it worth?”

“Almost four thousand.”

“Bullshit.”

“You a diamond expert now? I had it appraised over at the RenCen. That’s where I went while you were thinking. It’s worth three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. Plus tax.”

“He proposed to you?… What’d you tell him?”

“I said I’d have to ask my brother.”

Before he left the apartment Clement went into Del Weems’ closet and picked out one of his sports jackets, the pink and yellow and green Lily Pulitzer model. He took it down to the lobby with him, handed it across the desk to Thomas Edison, the doorman, and said, “Hey, Tom, this is for you. Case I don’t see you again.”

The doorman, who had seen the coat on Del Weems throughout the past summer, said, “You leaving us?”

“Yeah, time to move on. Feel like I’m living in a fish bowl-people watching every move I make.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know as I can take this coat.”

“Don’t be bashful,” Clement said. “It’s for letting me use your car… shit, for being a good guy. I’ll tell you something. I know white people that’ve been personal friends of mine for years I couldn’t count on like I have you. You wear it and watch all the colored girls’ eyes light up.”

It was nearly eight o’clock and Thomas Edison was going off duty. The night man was standing with him at the desk. They watched Clement walk over to the bank of elevators and get in, going down to the garage. As the door closed, Thomas Edison said to the night man, “What did he say to me?”

“What you think he said,” the night man answered. “It was mighty white of you, boy.”

Thomas Edison took the card out of his pocket that the black detective-Wendell Robinson was the name-had given him, picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card for Homicide, Squad Seven.

He said, “That redneck motherfucker you looking for’s driving a ’76 Mercury Montego, light blue, old beat up piece of shit… What?… Wait now, I’ll tell you what. You ask me one question at a time, my man, and I’ll see if I can give you the answers. How that be?”