Double Play

42.

Burke drove up to Harlem to Wendell Jackson’s pool hall.

“I was hoping you’d let me borrow Ellis next Sunday,” Burke said.

“Why?”

“Got a letter says a guy is going to kill Robinson.”

“During a game?”

“Yes.”

“So what you think Ellis gon’ do?” Jackson said.

“I figure he can shoot,” Burke said.

Ellis, leaning against the wall by the door, had no expression on his face. Jackson smiled.

“That right, Ellis? Can you shoot?”

“I can shoot,” Ellis said.

“So who you want Ellis to shoot?” Wendell said.

“Anybody tries to kill Robinson.”

“That’d pretty sure be a white boy, wouldn’t it?”

“Pretty sure.”

Jackson shook his head.

“We like Jackie, don’t we, Ellis?”

Ellis nodded.

“And he wanna come up here, we look after him good,” Wendell said. “That so, Ellis?”

Ellis nodded again. Burke thought that Wendell sounded much more Negro than he had the last time they talked. It was like he was slipping into a disguise.

“But down there?” Wendell shook his head. “That be white man’s work.”

“Protecting Jackie?”

“You think Ellis go down there shoot some peckerwood ofay, and he get treated like a hero?”

“I think he could get away with it,” Burke said.

“That’s ’cause you white,” Wendell said. “Ellis and me know better. That’s white man business down there.”

Burke didn’t say anything for a time. Wendell and Ellis were still.

Then Burke said, “The deal with Paglia still there?”

“Ain’t heard that it’s not,” Wendell said.

Burke nodded.

“Okay,” he said, and stood and walked out of Wendell’s office, and through the hostile pool room to the street where his car was parked, and drove downtown.

He put his car in a midtown lot and walked down Eighth Avenue for three blocks to Freddy’s. It was the middle of the afternoon and things were slow. Burke went to the bar and laid a ten on the bar.

“My name’s Burke,” he said to the bartender, “I need to see Cash.”

“Cash?”

“Guy walks around with Mr. Paglia,” Burke said. “I need to see him.”

The bartender looked at the ten for a moment. Then he picked it up, folded it skillfully, and slipped it into his side pocket.

“Whaddya drink?” he said.

“Vat 69,” Burke said. “Ice.”

The bartender poured him the drink.

“I’ll see out back,” he said, “if anybody knows.”

Burke sipped his drink. There were three college-age kids in a booth drinking beer. He remembered before the war, he’d been working high iron at that age and he’d come to New York on a job. Drinking age was eighteen in New York. He remembered feeling liberated. There was a mirror behind the bar and the liquor bottles were arranged in front of it. Backlit by the reflection, they were prismatic. The daylight seeped in through the big front window and mixed with the colored lights on the jukebox, and the lesser lights in the ceiling. There was a large Miss Rheingold sign on the wall. A middle-aged couple sat at the other end of the bar, drinking Manhattans. She was a little old for him, probably, but he liked the slope of her thigh as she sat on the stool. I used to like quiet bars in the afternoon, he thought. I used to like hamburgers with a slice of red onion. I used to like a lot of things. The bartender returned and made the couple two more Manhattans, and drew three more beers for the kids, and poured more scotch into Burke’s glass. He didn’t say anything and neither did Burke. The bright blond waitress brought the beer to the booth. One of the kids said something to her and she shook her finger at him. The kids laughed and so did the waitress.

Cash came in and stood for a moment inside the door, waiting, Burke knew, for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. When he could see well, he walked to the bar and sat beside Burke.

“Shot of CC,” he said to the bartender. “Water back.”

He turned to look at Burke.

“Got a problem?” he said.

“Guy says he’s going to shoot Jackie Robinson,” Burke said.

Cash shrugged.

“What guy?”

“Guy I know,” Burke said.

“He tell you?”

“Somebody knows him told me.”

“You believe him?”

“Yes,” Burke said.

“So?”

“Could this be some game Paglia’s playing?” Burke said. “To get around the Jackson deal?”

“No,” Cash said. “He has someone shot, I do it.”

“You’re sure.”

“It ain’t Paglia,” Cash said.

The bartender brought Cash his drink. Cash took half of it in a swallow and chased it with some water.

“Whaddya need from me?” he said.

“I need another shooter,” Burke said.

“Me?” Cash said. “What the fuck has this got to do with me?”

Burke shrugged.

“Why would I do gun work for you or some jigaboo I don’t even know?”

Burke shrugged.

“You think it’s real?”

“Got to act like it is,” Burke said.

“Yeah,” Cash said. “You do.”

They were quiet. One of the kids got up from the booth and used the pay phone. The colors of the booze bottles gleamed behind the bar.

“So why’d you ask me?” Cash said. “For crissake, Paglia may have me kill you someday.”

“Asked Jackson already, he turned me down.”

“One of his own people,” Cash said.

“You were the only other one I could think of.”

“Okay,” Cash said. “So you ain’t got many friends. What in hell made you think I’d do it?”

“You’re like me,” Burke said.

“Like you?”

“Un huh. Same kind of guy.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Cash said.

Burke looked into his drink. He thought the silvery transparent ice cubes looked really nice in the rust-colored scotch. He drank most of it.

“You know what we both are,” Burke said.

He looked at himself and Cash, in the mirror, among the pretty bottles. Two men, older than they’d had time to get, both with the same flat look in their eyes.

“We are what we do,” Burke said. “There’s nothing much else.”

“Except the gun and the balls,” Cash said.

Burke smiled a small joyless smile.

“Except that,” he said.

The bartender brought each of them a fresh drink without being asked. He took away the wet coaster napkins and polished the bar in front of them and put out fresh napkins.

“You think you’re as good as me?” Cash said.

“Don’t know,” Burke said. “Don’t care.”

Cash smiled.

“Me either,” he said.

They drank some of their whisky. The kids at the table stood and straggled boisterously out.

“You care what happens to this nigger, though,” Cash said.

“I’m being paid to.”

“If someone paid you more, would you walk away?”

“You know it doesn’t work that way,” Burke said.

Cash nodded.

“You’re right,” he said. “It don’t. Can’t.”

They both finished their second drink. Cash gestured at the bartender and he brought them a third.

Burke picked his up and looked at it for a moment.

Then he said to Cash, “I need you to help me.”

Cash drank some of his drink, washed it back with water.

“Okay,” he said.