City Primeval

21

“YEAH, IT’S DARK IN HERE,” Clement said, looking around Uncle Deano’s, at the steer horns on the walls and the mirrors framed with horse collars. “Darker’n most places that play Country, but it’s intimate. You know it? I thought if we was gonna have a intimate talk why not have it at a intimate place?” Clement straightened, looking up. “Except for that goddamn pinball machine; sounds like a monkey playing a ‘lectric organ.” He settled down again. “I’ll tell you something else. If our mom hadn’t been carried away by a tornado last spring, we’d be holding this meeting in Lawton.”

Sandy said to Skender Lulgjaraj, “He means Lawton, Oklahoma.”

“Well, hell, he’s heard of Lawton, hasn’t he? If he hasn’t, he’s sure heard of Fort Sill… Here,” Clement said, “make you feel at home.”

He took off his K-mart cowboy hat, reached across the table and placed it on Skender Lulgjaraj’s thick head of black hair. The hat sat high and Skender tried to pull it down tighter as he turned to Sandy.

“Hey,” Sandy said, “you look like a regular cowpoke.”

“I don’t think it fit me,” Skender said, holding onto the brim with both hands.

“It looks cute,” Sandy told him. “Goes with your outfit nice.” She reached over to brush a kernel of popcorn from the lapel of Skender’s black suit, then picked another one from the hair that showed in the open V of his silky beige sportshirt.

Clement was reaching out, stopping their waitress with his extended arm. He said, “Hey, I like your T-shirt. Honey, bring us another round, will you, please? And some more popcorn and go on over and ask Larry if he’ll do ‘You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille’ the next set? Okay? Thank you, hon.” He turned to Skender and said, “Our mom loved that song. She’d listen to it and get real mad and say, ‘That woman’s just trash, leave four children, hungry children, like that.’ I believe she loved that song, I’d say just a smidge behind Luckenback, Texas. I know you heard that one.”

Skender said, “Luke… what?”

“He’s putting me on,” Clement said to Sandy. “You putting me on, Skenny? You mean to tell me you never heard Waylon do ‘Luckenback, Texas’? Time we got back to the basics of life?”

Sandy said, “It’s ‘Time we got back to the basics of love’… not life.”

Clement squinted at her. “You sure?”

Sandy glanced over at the bandstand in the corner where Larry Lee Adkins and the Hanging Tree-three guitars and a set of drums-were getting ready for the next set. “He just played it,” Sandy said. “Ask him.”

Clement was thoughtful. “He says let’s sell your diamond ring, get some boots and faded jeans…”

“And he says we got a four-car garage and we’re still building on,” Sandy said. “So maybe it’s time we got back to the basics of love.”

“That doesn’t rhyme.”

“I never said it did. But it’s love, not life.”

Skender, with his cowboy hat sitting on top of his head, would look from one to the other.

Clement grinned at him. “Well, it don’t matter. We’re here to talk about the basics of love anyway, aren’t we, partner?” He paused, cocking his head. “Listen. Hear what they’re playing? ‘Everybody Loves a Winner,’ “ Clement half singing, half saying it. “That’s a old Dalaney and Bonnie number.”

“You’re sure full of platter chatter this evening,” Sandy said. “You ought to get a job at CXI and get paid for it.”

“Well, I got nothing against work. I come a piece from the oil fields to the world of speculation,” Clement said, seeing Sandy rolling her eyes as he tightroped along the edge of truth. “But I’d rather see my investments do the work than me, if you know what I mean and I think you do.” He looked over at Skender and gave him a wink. “I understand you’re in the restaurant business.”

“Coney Island red-hot places,” Skender said. “I start out, I save eighty-three dollars and thirty-four cents a month. The end of a year I have one thousand dollars. I buy a HUD house, fix it up and rent it to people. I keep saving eighty-three dollars and thirty-four cents a month. I buy another house, fix it up. Then I sell the first house and buy a Coney Island. I buy another house, more houses, fix them up, sell some of them, buy an apartment, buy another Coney Island. In twelve years I have two apartments now I keep for rent and four Coney Island red-hot places.”

Sandy reached over to touch Skender’s arm, looking at Clement. “Hasn’t he got a cute accent?”

Clement said, “Yeah, I ‘magine you’re paying Uncle Sam a chunk, too.”

Skender shrugged. “Yes, I pay. But I have money.”

“You ever been married?”

“No, thirty-four years old, I never marry. My cousin Toma and my grandfather, the houseman, the head of the family, they try to get me to marry

someone from Tuzi, in Yugoslavia, bring her over here to marry. But I say no and make them very angry, because I want to marry an American girl.”

Clement was listening intently, leaning over the table on his arms. He said, “I know what you mean, partner. Nice American girl… knows how to fix herself up, shaves under her arms… uses a nice perfume, various deodorants and flavors”-winking at Skender-“if you know what I mean. See,” Clement said, “I don’t mean to get personal with you, but I got to look out for sis here or I swear our mom’ll come storming back from wherever she’s at and give me the dickens. I said to her, Sandy-didn’t I?-it’s entirely up to you. But if this fella is sincere he won’t mind satisfying some of my natural curiousity and concern. I said, after all, if you’re gonna be Mrs. Lulgurri…”

Sandy rolled her eyes.

Skender said, “Lulgjaraj. It’s a very common name. When I look in the telephone book I see there are more Lulgjaraj than Mansell. I look hard, I don’t see your name. Another question I have, you don’t mind, if you sister and brother, why do you have different names?”

“One thing,” Clement said, “you can look at us and tell we both got shook out of the same tree, can’t you? Well, it’s a pretty interesting story how Sandy come to change her name… while she was out in Hollywood, was right after the Miss Universe contest…”

Skender was nodding, smiling. “Yes?” Sandy was sitting back in her chair, rolling her eyes.

Clement stopped. “I’ll tell you, I sure like a man with a natural smile like you got. It shows good character traits.” Clement stared hard at Skender, nodding slowly, thoughtfully, as Skender smiled, the smile becoming fixed in an awkward, almost pained expression.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Clement said. “I’ve been all over this country, coast to coast wherever my work as a speculator takes me, but believe it or not, you’re my first Albanian… Where you living now, Skenny?”

Skender went to the Men’s as they got ready to leave. Clement said to Sandy, “I wasn’t able to get a gun.”

She seemed nervous now, which surprised Clement, and said, “Be nice. You don’t have to do it tonight.”

Clement said, “Hell I don’t. I got seven dollars to my name and no place to sleep.”

Clement stayed close behind Skender’s black Cadillac, not letting any traffic get between them: straight down Woodward from Royal Oak into Detroit, east on the Davison Freeway to Joseph Campau and a ride down Hamtramck’s main drag, then a right at Caniff to head west, back toward Woodward, Clement thinking, This bird doesn’t even know how to get home. He turned a corner and parked behind the Cadillac in front of a U-shaped, three-story apartment building, 2781 Cardoni.

Skender told them he had been in this place four years. He had moved in right after his brother was shot and killed. Clement paid attention, looking away from the street signs in the light on the corner, and followed Skender and Sandy into the building.

Say he was shot? Clement asked and found out, yes, by a member of another family. It was a long boring story that Clement didn’t understand, something about an argument in a bar leading to the shooting of the brother, then a cousin and two from the other family were killed before some guy came over from Yugoslavia and settled the matter.

On the stairway Clement asked Skender if he had shot the two from the other family. But Skender didn’t hear him or else ignored the question, telling Sandy, yes, he still lived on the first floor. Sandy wanted to know why they were going up to the second floor then. Skender said wait and see.

Clement couldn’t picture this skinny camel-jockey-looking guy shooting anybody anyway.

He seemed to make a ceremony of unlocking the front apartment on the right and stepping back for them to enter. It was a big apartment. Clement was struck by the newness of everything. He thought it looked like a store display and found out he wasn’t far wrong.

“For my new bride,” Skender said, smiling, showing white teeth and gold caps in the light-Clement getting a good look at him for the first time-Skender sweeping the cowboy hat from his head to present the room, “Decorated with the Mediterranean suit by Lasky Furniture on Joe Campau”-Skender, Clement judged, going about five-nine, a hundred and thirty, maybe shorter, his hair giving him height-Skender showing them the master bedroom then, the other bedroom that would be a sewing room-Clement giving Sandy a nudge-the pink and green bathroom, the fully-equipped kitchen, ice-maker in the refrigerator, two bottles of slivovitz chilled for the surprise celebration…

Sandy looked surprised all right. She said, “Gee, it’s really nice.”

Clement wasn’t in any hurry. He let her walk around the apartment touching wild-animal figurines and the petals of the plastic tulip lamps, looking at the twin stardust-upholstered recliner chairs, looking at the painting of the big-eyed little girl and what looked like a real tear coming down her cheek, while Skender opened a bottle of slivovitz and brought it out to them with his fingers stuck in three stem glasses and the cowboy hat on the back of his head.

Clement kept calling Sandy sis. Saying, “Hey, you’re gonna love this place, aren’t you, sis?” Or, “How ’bout that sewing room, sis? God darn but he’s a thoughtful fella, isn’t he?” He said, “Man, this is choice stuff,” and got Skender to open the second bottle, Clement deciding it tasted something like bitter mule piss, but he wanted the Albanian good and relaxed. Near the bottom of the second bottle he said, “Now what’s this about a secret room somewhere? I hope it ain’t for locking sis in when she’s pouty or mean…” Sandy appeared to sigh with relief.

It was about the cleanest basement Clement had ever seen, with separate locked stalls for each of the building’s twelve tenants, a big furnace that was like a ship’s boiler with aluminum ducts coming out of it and running along the ceiling, cinderblock walls painted light green…

Skender said, “Now watch, please.”

As though Clement was going to look anywhere else-as Skender reached up to what looked like a metal fuse box mounted high on the wall by the furnace, opened it and snapped a switch to the “up” position. Clement heard a motor begin to hum; he located it in the overhead and followed an insulated wire over to a section of cinderblock wall. About three feet of the wall, from cement floor to unfinished ceiling, was groaning on unseen metal hinges, coming open right before his eyes, the motor high-pitched now, straining to actuate the massive load. Son of a gun…

The room inside was about ten-by-twelve. Clement stepped inside saying out loud, “I’ll be a son of a gun.” He saw the floor safe right away. About two feet high, with a telephone and a phone book sitting on top. There was an office-model refrigerator that contained a two-burner range, a record player on a stand, a half-dozen folded-up canvas chairs, a pile of sleeping bags, a table with a sugar bowl on it, prints on the wall of a white seaside village, one of Jesus showing his Sacred Heart and one with a lot of funny looking words Clement couldn’t read. Behind a folding door was a smaller room with a sink and toilet and shelves stocked with canned goods.

As Clement looked around, Skender turned on the record player. In a moment Donna Summer was coming on loud, filling the cinderblock room with disco music from one of her Greatest Hits.

Clement tried to ignore the sound. He said, “My oh my oh my. You play house down here or you hide for real?”

Skender, smiling, said, “I’m sorry. What?”

“I heard of Eye-talians going to the mattresses-how come I never heard of you people?”

“Specially since you read so much,” Sandy said.

Clement grinned at her. Little bugger, she was loosening up. That was good; they’d have some fun. He had said to her many times, as he did now, “If it ain’t fun, it ain’t worth doing, is it?”

She said, “You want me to leave?”

“Hell no, I don’t want you to leave. Do we?” Looking over at Skender and seeing him kneeling down at the safe now, opening it-the safe wasn’t even locked-and shoving a window envelope inside he had taken out of his inside coat pocket.

Right before your very eyes, Clement thought. You believe it? He would love to be able to tell this later on. Maybe to Sweety. Watch his old nigger face…

He said, “Hey, brother-in-law”-feeling a nice glow from the plum brandy and the bourbon he’d had before-“what you got in that box there?” The music wasn’t too bad…

“I keep some money, some things.” Skender drew an automatic out of the safe, held it up for Clement to see. Clement stepped over hesitantly, reached out and let Skender hand the gun to him. He felt Sandy watching, gave her a quick glance.

“This here’s a Browning.”

“Yes, and this one is a Czech seven-six-five. This little one is a Mauser. This one, I think, yes, is a Smith and Wesson. This one… I don’t know what it is.” Skender was laying the pistols on the floor next to the safe.

Clement released the clip from the Browning, looked at it and punched it back into the grip. “You keep ’em all loaded?”

“Yes, of course,” Skender said.

“What else you got in there?”

“No more guns. I keep some money…”

“How much?”

Skender looked up at him now, for a moment hesitant, then reached up quickly to keep the cowboy hat from falling down his back. “I put some in last week. I think now… four hundred, a little more.”

“Four hundred,” Clement said. He waited. “Four hundred, huh?”

“A little more.”

“How much more?”

“Maybe fifty dollars.”

Clement frowned. “You keep money in the bank?”

Skender hesitated again.

Sandy said, “It’s okay, he won’t tell nobody.”

“In a saving certificate,” Skender said, taking the envelope out again and opening it to look at a pink deposit receipt, “forty thousand three hundred and forty-three dollars.”

Clement said, “That’s where your forty grand is, in savings?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I thought you didn’t trust banks.”

Skender looked at him. “Yes, I trust the bank. They loan me money when I need it.”

Clement glared at Sandy. “Turn that goddamn goat-tit music off!” As she hesitated, startled, he stepped over to the record player and swept the arm scratching across Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits. “That disco shit just ricochets off my mind!”

There was a silence.

Sandy said quietly, very slowly, “I think somebody ought to calm down and quit acting like a spoiled brat. You’ll live longer.”

Skender seemed glad to look at Sandy as she spoke. He said, “I don’t understand why he did that.”

“Little misunderstanding,” Sandy said. “Everything’s okay now.”

Clement said, calm again, “How much you got in your checking account?”

Sandy grinned and shook her head as Skender looked up at Clement.

“I don’t keep much there. This time of the month maybe a few hundred.” Skender seemed to prepare himself then and said, “Why do you want to know this?” Hesitant, as though the question might be out of line, an affront to Clement.

“You have a little sister,” Clement said, “you want to be sure she’s taken care of.” He was looking around the room now, hands on his hips.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Skender said. “Can I have the gun back now? I put them away.”

Sandy was watching Skender. She saw his serious, almost-sad expression now. Disappointed. Or finally getting suspicious.

Clement, still looking around, wasn’t paying any attention to him, not even looking at him as he said, “When you’re hiding in here and the door’s closed, can you open it if you want?”

“Yes, there’s a switch.” Skender nodded. “There.”

Clement walked over to the metal switch housing mounted on the side wall, turned the Browning automatic in his hand to hold it by the barrel and whacked at the housing with the gun butt until it hung loose and he heard some excited words in Albanian. Clement turned and put the Browning on Skender, who was pushing himself up from the floor. “Stay right there, Skenny. Be a good boy.” He tore the switch from the wall, threw it out into the basement, then paused and reconsidered what he was about to do. Locking the guy in wasn’t going to teach him anything. Introduce him to reality. Clement stepped toward the Albanian.

“You got the EMS number handy?”

Skender was staring hard at him, black eyes glowing. Yes, Albanians could get sore at you, Clement decided. He heard Skender say, “I want you to leave here, now.”

“We’re going, partner, but first I want to call the Emergency Medical Service.”

Skender frowned, taking his time. “Why do you need them?”

Yes, they could get pissed at you, but my Lord, they were innocent about things. Place a level on this boy, up one side and down the other and get a true square.

“I don’t need the EMS,” Clement said. “You do.”

He heard Sandy say something like, Oh God, as he lifted the K-mart cowboy hat off the Albanian’s head and placed the nose of the Browning against the man’s hairline, the man’s forehead creasing in furrows as he tried to raise his eyes. “Now edge over to the door,” Clement said.

The Albanian tried to look at Sandy and Clement wrist-flicked the gun, giving him a backhand whack across the head. Skender came to attention. He began moving on his knees toward the opening in the wall, Clement prodding him along.

“Go on out, then turn around and sit down.”

Sandy said, “What’re you gonna do to him?”

“Just bring the phone out, hon. There’s enough cord. Tell the operator you want the Emergency Medical Service. When they answer, tell ’em to send a van over here to twenty-seven eighty-one Cardoni, corner of Caniff.” He looked at Skender, sitting outside the opening in the wall, and said, “Hold on, partner, I’ll be right with you.”

Sandy hurried out of there with the phone, edging past Skender. Clement followed, roughing Skender’s hair with his hand as he came out.

Skender was swallowing. He said something in a language Clement didn’t understand, then said, “You are crazy…”

“Lay back and stick your leg in the opening,” Clement said. “Either one, I don’t care.” He walked over to the furnace, reached up, and looked over his shoulder as he flicked the switch. With the hum of the motor the wall began to swing slowly closed. He saw Skender, twisted around watching him, draw his leg away from the wall and Clement switched the motor off. He said, “It’s up to you, partner”-walking over to him and placing the muzzle of the Browning against Skender’s head-“put your leg down or get your fur-cap head all over the basement.”

Sandy was saying into the phone, “Hi, we’re gonna need an ambulance. I mean we do need one, right now…”

Clement walked back to the furnace, reached up, flicked the switch on again and watched the wall moving in again, touching Skender’s leg now and pushing it up against the stationary section of wall-Skender staring, not believing it was happening to him-and Clement pulled the switch down. As the hum of the motor stopped, Skender looked around, eyes wide with fright and perhaps a little hope.

Clement said, “I want to impress something on you, partner. I’m disappointed, but I ain’t really mad at you, else I’d be pulling the trigger by now. See, but when you’re laying in the hospital with your leg in a cast, I don’t want you to have any bad thoughts like wanting to tell the police or the FBI or anybody. You do, I’ll come visit you again and stick your head in there ‘stead of your leg. You hear me? Nod your head.”

Sandy was saying, “No, the person didn’t have a heart attack…”

Clement flicked up the switch and let his hand come down.

Sandy was saying, “Course it’s serious…”

With the hum of the motor Skender began to cry out. He sucked in his breath, holding it, his face straining, then let the sound come out, his eyes closed tightly now and his face upturned, the sound rising, building to a prolonged scream.

Sandy said into the phone, “Hey, does that sound serious enough for you? You dumb shit…”