Looking for Rachel Wallace

17

I knew a guy who was in the Ku Klux Klan. His name was Manfred Roy, and I had helped bust him once, when I was on the cops, for possession of pornographic materials. It was a while ago, when possession of pornographic materials was more serious business than it is now. And Manfred had weaseled on the guy he bought it from and the friends who were with him when he bought it, and we dropped the charges against him and his name never got in the papers. He lived with his mother, and she would have been disappointed in him if she had known. After I left the cops, I kept track of Manfred. How many people do you know that actually belong to the Ku Klux Klan? You find one, you don’t lose him.

Manfred was working that year cutting hair in a barbershop on the ground floor of the Park Square Building. He was a small guy, with white-blond hair in a crew cut. Under his barber coat he had on a plaid flannel shirt and chino pants and brown penny-loafers with a high shine. It wasn’t a trendy shop. The only razor cut you got was if somebody nicked you while they were shaving your neck.

I sat in the waiting chair and read the Globe. There was an article on the city council debate over a bond issue. I read the first paragraph because Wayne Cosgrove had a byline, but even loyalty flagged by paragraph two.

There were four barbers working. One of them, a fat guy with an Elvis Presley pompadour sprayed into rigid stillness, said, “Next?”

I said, “No thanks. I’ll wait for him,” and pointed at Manfred.

He was cutting the hair of a white-haired man. He glanced toward me and then back at the man and then realized who I was and peeked at me in the mirror. I winked at him, and he jerked his eyes back down at the white hair in front of him.

In five minutes he finished up with Whitey and it was my turn. I stepped to the chair. Manfred said, “I’m sorry, sir, it’s my lunch hour, perhaps another barber … ?”

I gave him a big smile and put my arm around him. “That’s even better, Manfred. Actually I just wanted to have a good rap with you anyway. I’ll buy you lunch.”

“Well, actually, I was meeting somebody.”

“Swell, I’ll rap with them, too. Come on, Manfred. Long time no see.”

The barber with the pompadour was looking at us. Manfred slipped off his white barber coat, and we went together out the door of the shop. I took my coat from the rack as I went by.

In the corridor outside Manfred said, “God damn you, Spenser, you want to get me fired?”

“Manfred,” I said, “Manfred. How unkind. Un-Christian even. I came by to see you and buy you lunch.”

“Why don’t you just leave me alone?” he said.

“You still got any of those inflatable rubber nude girls you used to be dealing?”

We were walking along the arcade in the Park Square Building. The place had once been stylish and then gotten very unstylish and was now in renaissance. Manfred was looking at his feet as we walked.

“I was different then,” Manfred said. “I had not found Christ yet.”

“You, too?” I said.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Near the St. James Avenue exit was a small stand that sold sandwiches. I stopped. “How about a sandwich and a cup of coffee, Manfred? On me, any kind. Yogurt too, and an apple if you’d like. My treat.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

“Okay by me,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind if I dine.”

“Why don’t you just go dine and stop bothering me?”

“I’ll just grab a sandwich here and we’ll stroll along, maybe cross the street to the bus terminal, see if any miscegenation is going on or anything.”

I bought a tuna on whole wheat, a Winesap apple, and a paper cup of black coffee. I put the apple in my pocket and ate the sandwich as we walked along. At the far end of the arcade, where the Park Square Cinema used to be, we stopped. I had finished my sandwich and was sipping my coffee.

“You still with the Klan, Manfred?”

“Certainly.”

“I heard you were regional manager or Grand High Imperial Alligator or whatever for Massachusetts.”

He nodded.

“Dynamite,” I said, “next step up is playing intermission piano at a child-abuse convention.”

“You’re a fool, like all the other liberals. Your race will be mongrelized; a culture that took ten thousand years and produced the greatest civilization in history will be lost. Drowned in a sea of half-breeds and savages. Only the Communists will gain.”

“Any culture that produced a creep like you, Manfred,” I said, “is due for improvement.”

“Dupe,” he said.

“But I didn’t come here to argue ethnic purity with you.”

“You’d lose,” he said.

“Probably,” I said. “You’re a professional bigot. You spend your life arguing it. You are an expert. It’s your profession. And it ain’t mine. I don’t spend two hours a month debating racial purity. But even if I lose the argument, I’ll win the fight afterwards.”

“And you people are always accusing us of violence,” Manfred said. He was standing very straight with his back against the wall near the barren area where the advertisements for the Cinema used to be. There was some color on his cheeks.

“You people?” I said. “Us? I’m talking about me and you. I’m not talking about us and about you people.”

“You don’t understand politics,” Manfred said. “You can’t change society talking about you and me!”

“Manfred, I would like to know something about a group of people as silly as you are. Calls itself RAM, which stands for Restore American Morality.”

“Why ask me?”

“Because you are the kind of small dogturd who hangs around groups like this one and talks about restoring morality. It probably helps you to feel like less of a dogturd.”

“I don’t know anything about RAM.”

“It is opposed to feminism and gay activism—probably in favor of God and racial purity. You must’ve heard about them?”

Manfred shook his head. He was looking at his feet again. I put my fist under his chin and raised it until he was looking at me. “I want to know about this group, Manfred,” I said.

“I promise you, I don’t know nothing about them,” Manfred said.

“Then you should be sure to find out about them, Manfred.”

He tried to twist his chin off my fist, but I increased the upward pressure a little and held him still.

“I don’t do your dirty work.”

“You do. You do anyone’s. You’re a piece of shit, and you do what you’re told. Just a matter of pressure,” I said.

His eyes shifted away from me. Several people coming out of the bank to my right paused and looked at us, and then moved hurriedly along.

“There are several kinds of pressure, Manfred. I can come into work every day and harass you until they fire you. I can go wherever you go and tell them about how we busted you for possession of an inflatable lover, and how you sang like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to get off.” There was more color in his cheeks now. “Or,” I said, “I could punch your face into scrapple once a day until you had my information.”

With his teeth clenched from the pressure of my fist, Manfred said, “You miserable prick.” His whole face was red now. I increased the pressure and brought him up on his toes.

“Vilification,” I said. “You people are always vilifying us.” I let him go and stepped away from him. “I’ll be around tomorrow to see what you can tell me,” I said.

“Maybe I won’t be here,” he said.

“I know where you live, Manfred. I’ll find you.”

He was still standing very straight and stiff against the wall. His breath was hissing between his teeth. His eyes looked bright to me, feverish.

“Tomorrow, Manfred. I’ll be by tomorrow.”