Room To Swing

Room To Swing

Ed Lacy

This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

12345678910

If you're Toussaint Moore, a private investigator from New York City, and a Negro, framed in your own city for a white man's murder, you are going to find it tricky sledding in a small Ohio town, close to the Kentucky border. But the small town was where Moore felt he had to be, to try to find proof for the police that he was innocent of the killing.

Moore's problems had started in New York, when the publicity woman from a television show called You—Detective! came to ask him to shadow a man. The idea of the show was that the viewers were given information about a wanted man, and the first viewer to find the man and report him to the police won a reward. In short, it was a combination adventure and give-away show.

Ed Lacy has written his most unusual story—a very exciting one, and one which handles with exceptional insight a Negro's experiences in a large northern city and a small, bordering-on-the-South town.

“The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favoured few booted and spurred.”

THOMAS JEFFERSON

1

I BROKE par in Bingston. It's a little town of a couple of thousand in southern Ohio and you can take in the entire town in about three minutes. It took me less than a minute to learn all I wanted to know—that I'd made a mistake coming here.

The main drag looks bigger than it should because they get a lot of trade from nearby farms. I parked my car in front of the largest store—a drugstore—and went in. The few people passing stared at me like I'd stepped out of a flying saucer. Okay, even though my Jaguar is an eight-year-old job I picked up for six hundred bucks, any foreign heap attracts attention. A fact which was worrying me nuts at the moment; attention was the last thing I needed.

I was a positive sensation inside the store—everything stopped dead still. The fat soda jerk stared at me with disbelief, a guy having breakfast at the counter spun around, toast in mouth, and made big eyes, the druggist was getting some mail from an old Negro postman and they both looked startled. It was a well-stocked place, more like a general store. I saw the phone booths and walked over. The Bingston phone book is about the size and thickness of a Broadway theater program. There wasn't any May Russell listed.

Figuring there had to be more to the phone book than this booklet, I started toward the soda jerk to ask. He reacted like a ham actor, his round face showing horror, then a fat grin of relief as he glanced at the door. I turned to see a cop coming at me, coming fast. Some small-town cops sport musical-comedy uniforms. This one was a stocky, middle-aged joker in high-polished black boots, gray breeches with a wide purple stripe down the sides, leather wind-breaker with the largest badge I ever saw, and a kind of cowboy hat. There wasn't any doubt as to why he was coming; his gun was loose in its holster and he was actually holding a billy in his right hand. I didn't see how they could be looking for me so soon, but my stomach began turning somersaults. I got set; if I could flatten this cop and make the door I was safe.

The mailman was suddenly in my way, both hands on my right fist as he whispered, “Relax, son.”

“Get out of my face!” I said, pulling my hand away. The cop was on top of us. The mailman nodded at him and said, “Hello, Mr. Williams.”

“Hello, Sam. Anything for me?”

“I left a few letters at your office,” the postman said, still blocking me.

The cop asked me, “Stranger in town, boy?”

“Yeah.” I'd been called boy more times in the last half a dozen hours than in my whole life.

“That's what I thought. I'd better explain a few things to you.”

“What things?” I said, my eyes on his billy hand. I pushed the mailman out of the way but the damn fool stepped right back in front of me.

“What you doing here, boy?”

“Looking in the phone book. That against the law?”

“Nope. I thought maybe you was thinking of eating in here. Being new, maybe you don't know it ain't the custom for colored to eat in here.”

I got a little mad and I relaxed, almost sagged with relief. I was still in the clear. The crazy thing that stuck in my mind was that this cop had a kind face, and if anything, he was talking very gently —with the billy ready for action. I told him, “I wasn't planning on eating the phone book.”

The cop grinned, his eyes taking in my Fifth Avenue clothes—and he'd sure seen the Jaguar outside. Then his eyes went over my broken nose and the fact I had about a half a foot and at least sixty pounds on him, and he looked a trifle unhappy again. “Understand, I don't want no trouble. Being you're a new boy around here, I want to straighten you out.”

“Then we're straight. That all there is to the phone book?” I nodded toward the booths.

“That's the phone book. Who you looking for?”

“Must have the wrong town. I didn't see the party listed,” I said, walking around the mailman, heading for the door.

The postman said, “I know about everybody in Bingston,” and his brown face said plainly, “As one Negro to another, let me help you.”

“That's okay, forget it.” I walked outside and looked up and down the main street, saw it all without straining my neck. A movie, two small hotels, several supermarkets, a couple dozen stores, and maybe another “business” street crossing this one about a block down.

The town letter carrier was standing beside me. He said, “Guess you must be from up North. Bingston isn't a mean town for coloured, just a little old-fashioned. No sense getting into trouble, son.”

“Skip the race-relations lecture, Uncle. You know a May Russell?”

A darker anger flooded his brown face at “Uncle.” He started to walk away, saw the cop watching us from the store door. He turned back and told me, “Look, we don't want trouble in this town. I've lived here all my life and our people have made progress in Bingston.”

“You going to straighten me out, too? I stop to look at a phone booth and I'm trouble. How far south is Ohio?”

“Asking for May Russell will start real trouble. She isn't for coloured men.”

“What's that mean?”

“She's a... a... scarlet lady!” he whispered.

I broke down and laughed. I hadn't heard that phrase since I read The Scarlet Letter in high-school and was disappointed that it wasn't hot stuff. The mailman laughed a little, showing crooked teeth. “Got me wrong, Pops. There a hotel where I can put up for a couple of days?”

“No hotel here, for coloured. We only have thirty-nine Negro families in Bingston.”

“Hell, doesn't Ohio have a civil-rights law, or any—?”

“We're right on the border of Kentucky, so—” he waved a stubby brown hand southward—“we don't get many out-of-town coloured persons. Mrs. Kelly takes in roomers but she's full up. How long do you plan on staying?”

“Couple days. I'm a... a musician. I'm on my way up to Chicago; thought this May Russell was the friend of a guy I knew.”

“I knew you were theater folk. What's the name of this friend you're looking for? Knowing everybody here is my business.”

“An army buddy. Just called him Joe.... Must have the wrong town,” I said, lying wildly. “Tell you the truth, Pops, I've been on the road a lot and have a slight cold. I want to rest up for a few days.”

“You certainly don't look sick. I'm Sam Davis. I suppose I can put you up at my house.”

“Thanks. I'm Harry Jones,” I said, picking a clever name out of the air.

As we shook hands he said, “Will two dollars a night and a dollar for meals be all right?”

“Perfect.”

“I'll phone Mary, my wife, that you're coming. You turn left on Elm, at the traffic light down the street. Then you keep walking for about five blocks and you'll see a brick house with wooden ducks on the front lawn. Wire fence. That's mine. You'll be in the coloured section. Ask anybody for Sam Davis' house. Not too much of a walk.”

“I'm on rubber,” I said, nodding at the Jaguar. He was impressed, asked, “Can you do a hundred in that?”

“With the gas pedal off the floor. Thanks for the room. I'll go right out and grab some sleep. Think it would cause a riot if I buy the local paper first?”

“Now, now, Mr. Jones, Bingston isn't that bad. The News don't come out till noon, unless you want yesterday's copy.”

“Yesterday's will do. Like to read myself to sleep.”

“You can buy one at the Smoke Shop across the street. I'll phone Mary that you're coming out.”

I got the paper and, as I slid behind the wheel, the cop walked over and asked, chummy-like, “This a European auto?”

He was really friendly, yet if I wanted to get a cup of coffee in the drugstore he would bash my head in. “English.”

“Pretty expensive, I bet?”

“You win the bet,” I said, starting the Jag.

“Any better than our cars?”

“No,” I said, backing out, I made the turn at the traffic light and pulled over to the curb. Elm Street was a lot of big houses with even bigger lawns. The paper had used the wire story from New York about a Richard Tutt being found beaten to death in his room, and that the police were looking for “a” Negro. Fingerprints had revealed Tutt's real name to be Robert Thomas and that he was a wanted criminal. At the bottom there were a few puff paragraphs about Thomas having been born in Bingston and wanted by the local police for the last six years. There wasn't anything I didn't know already, so I put the paper down and drove on.

The postman's house was better than I expected: old, but solidly built. In fact most of the houses in this “Negro” section looked pretty good. There was a driveway and a garage in the back. I parked in the driveway, in the rear of the house, locked the car. My license plates were muddy enough. A plump woman with a warm brown face opened the door, said, “You must be Mr. Jones. Come in. I've hardly had time to straighten up the guest room. Haven't used it since my cousin Allen, from Dayton, was here. Take me a minute to dust and—”

“I'm pooped,” I said, suddenly aching with tiredness. “I'd like to go to bed now.”

“You must think I'm a terrible housekeeper.”

“I don't. I'm too tired to think anything. Can I go to my room now?”

“As you wish. You do look tired. I'll get you a towel. Where are your bags?”

“In the car,” I lied. “I'll get them later.”

I followed her upstairs to a large room filled with old, heavy furniture. The bed looked wonderful. She gave me a towel, said the bathroom was down the hall, and kept chattering about the dust and things. The room looked neat as a pin to me. I stopped her mouth by hanging my Harris-tweed overcoat in the large closet. She stood in the doorway, said, “Mr. Davis told you two dollars a night and—”

“Yeah.” I gave her a five-dollar bill.

“Well, he was wrong about the meals. Food's gone up. It will be two dollars a day instead of one for meals.”

“Okay.”

“I'll give you your change later.” She hesitated, pulled at her apron with the money hand. “I hope you're not a drinking man, Mr. Jones.”

“I'm only a tired man. Good day, Mrs. Davis.” When she left I hung up my coat, locked the door, hid my wallet and badge under the mattress, the data on Thomas under the rug. Taking off my nylon shirt and underwear, I made sure the hallway was empty and sprinted to the bathroom. It was the largest I'd ever seen. I took a fast shower, washing my shirt and stuff, toweled myself dry, and made another nude sprint down the hallway. I hung up the shirt and underwear carefully, pulled the shades down, and jumped into bed.

I wanted to think; I had to think if I wanted to get out of this mess. But I hadn't slept in two days and the bed was soft as a good dream. When I jerked myself awake the pale green hands on my wrist watch said it was ten o'clock. I'd pounded my ear for a dozen hours. I felt great—and mad as hell at wasting all that time.

I pulled up the shades; it was very dark outside, the dim street lights blocks apart. My wash was dry and I got my pipe working as I dressed. It wouldn't be safe to hang around this burg for more than a day or two, if it was safe at all. Normally it would be a cinch to shake a little town like Bingston clean in two days, only it was south and I had dark skin. I'd stand out and somebody would peg me as “the" Negro being hunted by the New York police.

I was too much of a stranger. If I only had a contact, somebody in town to do the more obvious asking around. Old super sleuth me, what asking? I didn't have one idea as to what I was looking for. A hick town could be either a wonderful hideout or a trap.

Taking out the TV data on Bob Thomas I read through it for the tenth time. I felt a little better, still had a hunch the killer had to come from Bingston. Unless it was a freak job, one that didn't fit any pattern. If it was a crazy killing, then I might as well go back and put it down in the electric chair.

The house was so quiet I knew the old couple were asleep. And I was hungry enough to see what the refrigerator held. The TV was on, giving the parlor an unreal glow. There was a young girl watching the screen. I could see her face clearly, a lean dark face, skin as dark as mine, hair piled atop her head au naturel. When she saw me she stood up and turned on a lamp. She was wearing a simple knitted gray suit that clung to her tall, strong figure. In the light she looked older than I thought, about twenty-seven. Her nose was short, her eyes large and deep, and she had full, heavy lips.

“Mr. Jones? I'm Frances Davis. Mom said you might want supper. Do you?”

The voice was low and sullen, maybe even bitter. “Where is everybody?”

“Asleep. It's after ten—late for us.”

“Sorry I kept you up. I'll go out and grab a bite.”

“Where? There ain't any 'coloured' restaurants here. You didn't keep me up; I'm a TV bug. If you want to eat follow me into the kitchen.”

“Doesn't seem much worth getting up for at any time in Bingston,” I said as she walked by me toward the kitchen. She was about six feet tall, and in flat shoes.

“Not if your skin isn't pale.” She stopped in front of me. “Your shoulders make you seem short. You're not. And your clothes—they're the end. You're really togged down.”

Up close her face looked a little on the cute side, the heavy lips and eyes interesting. “Thanks, honey. I like your suit too.”

“Bought it in Cincinnati last year. How did you break your nose?” she asked, opening the kitchen door.

“Played football a lot of years ago. Had a pigskin scholarship—till the war came.” The kitchen was big and bright, and a little crazy: very modern refrigerator and freezer, electric washing machine and electric grill—and an old-fashioned coal-burning stove polished a glistening black. She pointed toward a white table and I sat down as she took various pots out of the refrigerator, which was stocked with food. “Greens, rice, roast pork, biscuits, potatoes, and pie. Coffee or tea. Okay?”

“Fine, but I'll skip the biscuits and potatoes. And tea.”

“What's your instrument and what band are you with?”

“Drums. I'm not with any outfit at the moment. Been playing a few club dates down in New Orleans and Lake Charles—heading up to Chicago for some more. Mostly wild-cat jobs.”

“How's New Orleans?”

“Hot and damp. I was glad to blow the city.”

“Man, I dug your Jaguar outside. It's the greatest.”

“Honey, why don't you cut the phony jive talk?”

She turned from the coal stove, which must have been going all the time—the kitchen was overwarm. “I was putting it on for you, being you are a jazz man. Speaking of phony things, stop calling me Honey.”

“Okay, Miss Frances. And I didn't mean to talk out of turn.”

She gave me a quiet stare as she started loading my plate. “I took it as a compliment, Mr. Jones. Tell me, why did you come to Bingston?”

I didn't get the compliment angle. And it was time I started asking questions. Between mouthfuls of the fine food I said, “No reason, merely passing through and thought I'd rest up for a couple of days. I was reading the Bingston paper this morning; seems like you had a little excitement here—a local lad was killed in New York. Did you know this Tutt—or Thomas?”

“I remember him but I didn't know him. He was white. I read about his being killed. You know, the older I get the more I'm convinced whites are crazy.”

I nodded, swallowed a lot of rice. “You remind me of my old man. He was a nationalist. Last thing I expected to find... here.”

“You mean in this wide-spot-in-the-road,” she said, sitting opposite me, nibbling on a small hunk of pie. Her brown skin looked velvet smooth, and the kitchen light showed rather high cheekbones. “We didn't have to fight for integration here—this isn't really 'South.' Yet Bingston is a prison with colour bars. A Negro girl can only work at certain jobs; she has a choice, or a chance, of marrying only two or three single men; must live within a certain area; can't eat anyplace but— But you know that too.”

“A small town is a small town, even for whites.”

“And ten times as small for us!”

“Must be buses leaving here every day. This Thomas guy took off, and look how he ended up. What does Bingston think of his murder? Any—eh—fuss because a Negro was supposed to have done it?”

“It was different for him here; he was white, although a poor one. They even were doing a TV show about him. Sometimes I think of trying to make it in New York or Los Angeles—but I'm scared. You can be lonely in a big city too. Be different if I knew people there. And I've seen pictures of the Harlem and South Side slums, know they aren't any paradise.”

“True, but at least you have more room to swing. Maybe this Thomas swung too wide?”

She shrugged her shoulders, seemed to have larger breasts than I'd thought. “I dream a lot about leaving here. Sometimes Bingston seems a living cemetery for me. Then I tell myself I'm living in a comfortable house with my folks, why should I run away? This is my town as much as the ofays'—why give it to them?”

“Doesn't Ohio have a civil-rights law?” I asked over another forkful of rice and gravy. Her words were giving me an idea—if I worked it right maybe I'd found my local helper.

“You mean do we fight back? Sure. As I told you, it isn't the actual law here as much as custom. But in the long run they mean the same thing. We're only a handful and most of us have 'good' jobs. For instance, I could make and save a lot of money as a domestic. But a few of us try to raise some sand—we've just won a two-year fight to sit in the orchestra of the movie house instead of the balcony. Big deal.” She shook her head. “I shouldn't say that, it was a big thing. Only—damn, there has to be more to living than sitting in the orchestra.”

“What do you do? Going to college?”

“My brother is at Howard. It makes me burn, Pop insisted on sending him to a coloured college. I wanted him to go to Ohio State. Another lost battle. I couldn't go to college. It wasn't a question of money—I'm just a female and marriage should be my career. Bunk!”

“Your folks are old-fashioned?”

“Pop finally sent me to a business school up in Dayton, as if anybody needs a brown secretary in Bingston. I work as a part-time typist for Mr. Ross, a mealy-mouthed tan lawyer and real-estate hustler. Has a family and a hobby— making passes at me. I also have a part-time job in a bakery a few blocks from here—result of another battle. That's what kills me; you have to fight for a lousy job selling cakes. Want your tea now?”

“Yes, thanks.” I cut into the pie. It was wonderful. “Has this Thomas killing started any feeling here against coloured?”

“No. If anything, people are relieved that he's dead.”

“According to the papers he was a one-man crime wave before he took off.”

“He broke out of jail.”

“He was in for rape and assault, wasn't he?”

She got up to get the tea. For no reason I noticed her legs were strong and not skinny. I sugared the tea as she sat down again, took out a pack of butts. I pointed to my pipe sticking out of my breast pocket as I got a match working. She blew a small cloud of smoke at the ceiling, said nothing. “Rape and assault. He must have been a sweet character,” I said, trying to get back to Thomas.

“That was a joke—the rape part. Porky Thomas never had to rape May Russell.”

“Porky?” This wasn't down on my data sheet.

“He was always hungry as a kid. He'd eat anything, like a pig. But why talk of him? He just got what a black boy gets every day If he steps out of 'line'—framed. Did you buy your Jaguar in England?”

“No.” I wondered what she meant by Thomas being framed. “Did Porky...?”

“I thought maybe you traveled abroad with a band. I'm saving for a trip to Europe. My favorite daydream.”

“That's one thing we have over the ofays; leaving the States is more of a joy for us.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Have you been abroad?”

“Paris, Berlin, Rome, Leghorn. I was a captain in the army,” I said, talking too much. “What did you mean by saying Thomas was framed?”

“A captain—well! I wanted to join the WAC's once, to travel. How is Paris, really, how is it?”

“Wonderful. Look, about—”

“Imagine being able to walk anyplace without even wondering if you're welcome. Seeing your car set me dreaming again. Those bucket seats, they're so different.”

“Care to take a ride? Any place we can stop for a drink?”

“Thank you but I don't want to take a ride,” she said, but I knew she did. “There is an after-hours shack out in the country where they sell bootleg stuff. But it's a depressing, dirty place.”

I stood up. “Then let's just take a ride.”

She didn't get up. Looking at the table she said, “No.”

“Come on, I want to see the city.”

“At night? No, Mr. Jones, it sounds too much like the well-dressed city smoothie giving the country-bumpkin gal a break.”

“What?” I laughed. “I'm not going to make a pass at you. Not that you ain't pretty, but I won't make play. Or do you think I will?”

“I think you're a liar, Mr. Jones.” She said it softly, staring up at me with bold eyes. “You told Pop you were driving all yesterday, why should you want to drive some more? You talk of New Orleans and Chicago but your car has New York plates. Exactly what are you doing in Bingston?”

“I told you, merely resting...”

“I know what you told us.”

I didn't know what to say; wondered why I was suddenly frightened of this young girl. I stood there like a dummy for a second, then for no reason I pulled out my wallet, asked, “Should I pay you now for...?”

Her eyes stopped me, although she didn't say a word for a moment; then she said, “Oh... put your damn money away! Do you think I'm asking because I'm afraid you'll run out on your bill? Maybe you're right, money-grabbing is another small-town hobby. My God, Pop and Mom, they just sock it away.... All the time I was a kid, even when I was in high school, I rarely saw Mom. She was cooking and busting suds in a white house, even bringing home leftover food for us. And Pop making as much as anybody else in town!”

She looked away and I stood there, liking Frances, feeling sorry for her—and still afraid. She broke the awkward silence with “You can stay here the night but I want you to leave in the morning. You're not a drummer. I'm a jazz nut, and I know the name of every bandman in the country. I don't believe you came up from New Orleans in that Jaguar: if you'd been in the deep South you never would have walked into the drugstore acting like you wanted to slug Mr.—the cop. Pop told me about that.”

“I seem to have been quite a conversation piece,” I said, thinking I had no choice now, I had to trust her before she asked too many questions.

“Any stranger causes talk in a small town. You want to stay in Bingston, that's your business. But you're also in our house and that makes it my business. All during supper you've been trying to quiz me about Porky Thomas and... Well, I even doubt your name is Jones.”

“You're right. I'm Toussaint Marcus Modre from New—”

She clapped her hands and laughed, the laughter lighting up her face. “How wonderful! Marcus after Marcus Garvey, of course!”

“Yeah. My father... naming me like that I don't have to tell you any more about him. Frances, you've made a lot of big talk about rights. I'm a private detective—there's a coloured man being framed for the Thomas killing back in New York. That's why I'm here. I need help badly— your help.”

She stood up. “A private eye?”

I flashed my badge.

“I'll be glad to help in any way I can, Toussaint... Touie.”

I said cautiously, “Wait up. Something else you have to know—it won't be safe or easy. Remember I said a coloured man is being framed for the murder. I certainly won't involve you, but at the same time helping me is... messy.”

“I don't care, I'll—” The bitterness came back to her face abruptly. “You?”

I nodded. “The New York City police are looking for a Negro they found with Thomas' body. That's me; I was there. You have to believe I didn't do it. New York or down in Cotton Patch Corners, when a black man is found around a body it's all the same—he's guilty.”

She was staring at me with wide eyes. “But you're a detective.”

“I was shadowing Thomas. Frances, I think the answer to the killing has to be in Bingston. I have about twenty-four hours to come up with the answer before 'a' Negro is known to be me. Still want to help?”

She was looking at me as if she was about to cry. Then she turned and started stacking the dishes in the sink. I waited a moment, feeling sick. I said, “Okay, I don't blame you. But give me one break, don't tell anyone what I've—”

“I'd like to take that ride now. I'll get my coat.”

I went upstairs and got my coat and hat. Frances was waiting at the door dressed in a plain cloth coat that looked baggy and worn, an ugly woolen stocking cap on her head. A door opened upstairs and Mrs. Davis stuck her gray head over the banister, asked, “Where are you going, Fran?”

“Mr. Jones is taking me for a ride,” she said, opening the front door.

“At this hour? Fran, I want to talk to you for a—”

“Mama, it's perfectly all right. Go to bed, please. We'll be back soon.”

Outside it was cold and dark. Unlocking the car door I turned to look at her dark face, tried to remember a poem I'd once read about the “night being dark like me.” Then I wondered if I was being taken; perhaps the ride she meant was directly to the local police station? But somehow I trusted her—not that I had any choice.

The Jag was dirty. I'd been refused service on the trip down, and had to eat in the car. “Excuse the condition of the car. I—”

“Let's drive. It's cold.” She shivered.

We got in and I backed out of the doorway and headed for noplace, just drove. I opened the heater. After a long silence Frances asked, “Can you tell me what happened, Touss... Touie?”

“Sure. I want to. All started three days ago—seems like a lifetime now. But three days ago I was sitting in my office...”

2

IT STARTED out as a big day—although I had made up my studio bed, turning my room into my “office,” how big a day it was going to be.

I share an old-fashioned railroad flat with a fireman named Ollie and a photographer called Roy, who works as a short-order cook to keep himself eating, and that's no joke. We live on the ground floor of a small semi-tenement up in what is stupidly known as Sugar Hill. It's a good deal: splitting expenses three ways it costs each of us about twenty-five dollars a month, which is only slightly more than you have to pay per week for a room with “kitchen privileges” in most parts of Harlem. I have the front room, which doubles as my office, a simple but dignified sign in the window stating I am a licensed private investigator. Both Ollie and Roy are younger than I, and over the weekend the place is full of girls and music. Not that I play the chick field; Sybil is about all the girl I can handle, or want to.

Ollie was working a morning tour and being a sucker for horses had left six bucks on my desk with instructions for me to play a nag called Dark Sue across the board. I had the alarm set for seven, not because I had to get up for a job, but to move my car to the other side of the street, a daily game between me and the cops since they put in this alternate-side-of-the-street parking. I showered and had coffee and juice with Roy, finally found a parking space on Amsterdam Avenue, considered washing the Jaguar but figured another day's dust wouldn't hurt. I hate to be mistaken for these clowns who spend every free minute polishing their cars, take better care of them than they do themselves. I stopped off at the delicatessen, bought some milk and bread, and put in Ollie's bet; and on a hunch put down two bucks on the horse to show, for myself. The delicatessen always amazed me; although it was only a front for the numbers syndicate, the gray-haired white guy who ran it kept it spotless and well stocked, actually had it a going business—as a delicatessen.

Back in my room I dusted my modernistic furniture, which still looked pretty good, turned on the radio, and read my mail. There was a statement from the bank; my special checking account was down to sixty bucks. There was a mimeographed letter from the Post Office Department informing me I had been reached on the mail carrier's list and had two weeks in which to tell them if I wanted the job or not. There was an ad, and a letter from a downtown agency, my former boss, Ted Bailey, giving me a skip-tracing job. He always gave me the “coloured” cases. I never knew if he was afraid of the various Harlems throughout New York City or was merely throwing business my way. But I never got a “white" skip-tracing case. A woman named James had bought a combination stove and refrigerator for $320, on time of course, paid in $150 and then left her job and last known address, taking the stove-refrigerator.

So that was the mail. I put the letter from Ted in my pocket, read a morning paper Roy had brought in the night before, and wondered what I'd do about the P.O. job. I didn't want to take it but i£ I told Sybil that she'd raise sand. While I was thinking this over, I glanced out the window—my blinds needed dusting—and saw a cab stop and a woman get out. She didn't look like she belonged on 147th Street. Not because of the slightly bewildered way she looked around, or because she was white with delicate copper-coloured hair cut short in an Italian bob snugly about her head; but because she was dressed like mid town Park Avenue. Her clothes were simple, but smart and expensive; her slim figure and handsome face had been given a lot of care—every day. She walked into the hallway and a moment later there was a knock on my door. When I opened it she slowly ran her cool eyes over my hulk, lingering for a long second at my busted nose. She actually pushed past me, walking with a kind of show-girl strut around the room. “You Mr. T. M. Moore?” she asked, talking out the side of her thin mouth.

“That's right.”

“Can you be bought? Will you double-cross me?”

“What?” She didn't look like a loon.

“Will you sell me out to the first bubble-belly dame who crosses your path? I'm in a jam, see? With a statuesque blonde who's been had by a redhead, also statuesque, see? But the mastermind is a gray-headed babe who only is Junoesque—on her father's side. Ya got the angle, Mac?” She strode over to me and slapped my chest and hips. “What, no rod? You can be reported to the private optic union for not packing a rod,”

“Stop reaching, lady. It's too early for cornballing. What do you want?”

She smiled; her teeth were very white and even and she couldn't have been more than thirty-two. In a crisp, controlled voice she said, “Please excuse me, Mr. Moore. This is my first time in a detective's office and I simply couldn't resist the gag.”

I didn't get the joke but I sat behind my desk, very businesslike, pointed to my Swedish plywood chair as I told her, “Have a seat.”

“Thank you. I approve of your furniture: modern but in low key. My name is Kay Robbens, with an 'e'. Sid Morris recommended you.” She crossed her long legs and smiled again. She didn't have to say she was enjoying herself, that being in a Negro's office was kicks to her.

I relit my pipe slowly, careful not to look at her legs, asked, “Are you in need of a private detective?”

She nodded. Her eyes were faintly made up, a delicate blue on the lids; everything about her face was delicate, maybe even pretty on second look. She took a whiff of my pipe smoke, said, “Lovely spicy odor. What is it?”

“London Dock.”

“Can I borrow some?” She pulled a tiny jeweled pipe out of her bag and I pushed my tobacco pouch across the desk without batting an eye. She wasn't Park Avenue, she was Eighth Street. Sucking on her little pipe she said, “This is nice. Any special store?”

“You can buy it most anyplace. Did Sid recommend my tobacco?”

She slipped me that smile again, sure it was dazzling me, suddenly stood up and walked over to look at my army discharge framed on the wall, the little glass showcase atop my books holding my Bronze Star and Silver Star. She even glanced at my books, then sat down again, openly staring at me over her pipe.

The act was getting a trifle boring. “Thinking of starting your own army?” I asked, wondering how she kept her blue eyes so clear and bright.

“I'm thinking of hiring you as a detective, only I must be absolutely certain of one thing—whether you take the job or not, whatever I tell you now must remain in the strictest confidence. Agreed?”

“I respect the confidence of all my clients.”

“Good. I like the way you look. If I hire you it will be for a minimum of one month. I can pay fifty dollars a day, plus moderate expenses.”

She said it easily; I tried hard to play it cool but—fifteen hundred dollars! I sat up straight, as if I'd been pulled erect, and managed to say casually, “Depends upon what you expect me to do. Has to be legit.”

“This is a shadowing job. I must know where a... somebody... is all the time. It will be your job to see that he stands still, that I can put my hands on him any time I wish.”

I glanced at the thick wedding ring on her left hand. “Sounds okay, Mrs. Robbens, so far.”

She knocked the ashes out of her pipe and took a deep breath. “Here we go, and remember, this must be top secret. I'm in the Press Information Department of Central Televising. At the moment I'm assigned as P.R. to a new show due to premiere shortly. It's to be called You— Detective! and will be carried full net across the country. It's a big-budget show. We rehash some unknown but factual crimes, and offer a reward if any viewer can nab the criminal. It's been done before; you've probably seen similar shows.”

“If it's been done before, why start another one?”

She laughed, real tinkling laughter, as if she were fifteen.

“Mr. Moore, everything has been done before, it's how you do it that makes the selling difference. Our sponsor is a bug on criminals and detectives. A bug with a large drug company and a top advertising budget, so we've been kicking this crime-detective format around for a long time. It will be on film and we already have several shows in the can. Briefly, the idea is we dig up little-known crimes—gory or sexy ones—show the actual scenes of the crime, interview some of the people involved, the police, flash some of the 'wanted' flyers on the TV screen. The narrator is an actor with a rugged square chin like Dick Tracy. He'll be known as the Chief Inspector, and he ends the show by rehashing the clues, adds a few hints from his 'stoolies,' and finally points a thick finger at the audience as he orders his staff to get the fugitive. All corny as hell, isn't it?”

I didn't know whether to nod or not. I shrugged.

“We have quite an audience-participation deal worked out: with two box tops one gets a small badge and a lot of other hocus-pocus. If a person with a badge sends in information that leads to an arrest, or reports it to the police, he gets double the reward a nonbuyer will receive. In short, it is a combination adventure and giveaway show.”

“And makes everybody a stool pigeon.”

Mrs. Robbens wrinkled up her thin nose. “It's low level, moronic, disgusting... and my job.”

“Where do I come in? Am I supposed to dig up cases for the show?”

“No, we have all we need, for now. You're to—” She suddenly noticed Ollie's scratch sheet on my desk, snapped her fingers as she glanced at the expensive watch on her bony wrist. “May I phone my bookie? I have a hunch running in the fourth race.”

She reached across the desk and took my phone before I could say yes or no, dialed somebody named Jack, told him, “This is Kay. I'd like a five-dollar lunch delivered at four. If I'm not around leave it on my desk. I'm busy on a story called Fast Bunny that looks like a winner. Okay? Thanks.” I had a feeling this was an act strictly for my benefit, although I didn't know why she had to impress me. I puffed on my pipe and looked at the sheet; the opening odds on Fast Bunny were 6 to 1.

Putting the phone back she slipped me the cool smile again. “It's silly. Butch and I spend hours at night doping the races, then I usually forget to place a bet in time. Where were we?”

“At where I come into the picture.”

“I'm sorry, I should have explained that first. As I told you, I'm public relations on the show. We have quite a publicity gimmick in the making. On the third week of the show we will use the case of Robert Thomas, wanted by the Ohio police for raping and assaulting a poor sixteen-year-old kid. A brutal crime that took place about six years ago. He's living and working here in New York under the name of Richard Tutt. You're to keep tabs on him.”

“What does 'tabs' mean to you?”

“For the next week or two, until his case is televised, all you do is check that he's on his job every day, that he doesn't move. Won't be much work. However, from the second his 'wanted' flyer is flashed on TV screens, you're to tail him twenty-four hours a day—until we rap him, which will be—”

“Until you do what?”

Her face showed surprise. “Rap him, send him up. That's the big publicity deal. A few hours after his case is shown we have a stooge set to turn Tutt in to the police, claiming it was all a result of our show. I don't have to blueprint the rest; our sponsor does a great deal of advertising, we'll make every paper in the nation and be able to have the stooge planted on several TV news programs. I'm counting on the publicity to shove the show into a top rating.”

“How did you learn where Thomas is now?”

“We do a thorough research job on all cases. One of our writers—he practically originated the show—got the data on Thomas. We used his case to audition the show, as a matter of fact. Now you understand your job: keep Thomas in sight until we're ready to lower the boom on him.”

“This Thomas... is he... I mean, is he coloured?” She looked startled.

“Oh, no. If anything, he's a Southern cracker.”

I'd been on “white” cases before. I mean, I worked every Friday and Saturday as a special doing guard work in a department store where Sid was the personnel manager. Still, my being an all-day tail in a white neighborhood raised a few obstacles. But for fifteen hundred dollars—hell, I'd make a good try at jumping over the Empire State Building. Only it was odd that Central Telecasting—she —hadn't gone to one of the big detective outfits.

Mrs. Robbens guessed my thoughts and said, “I came to you for two reasons. In a large agency there might be a leak and I don't have to tell you that if this reaches the papers ahead of time the publicity will blow up in our faces and rum the show. So a one-man agency was needed. You were recommended to me, and I feel I can count on your discretion, even after the case is ended. From time to time we have various matters needing investigation at the studio, and this can very well be your entree to Madison Avenue.

“I always try to give you people a helping hand, so very frankly I was pleased when I learned you were a Negro.” The smile again, on the patronizing side this time.

Okay, whites can sure say the jerkiest things and I'd met her type before. At least she was jerky in a friendly way; too many of them are nasty jerks.

“Will you take the case?”

“I think so,” I said, as if I was considering it.

She opened her bag and took out a thin but beautiful pile of twenty-dollar bills. “Here's two hundred dollars as a retainer. Now, for the time being this is hush-hush, even in our office. Only my immediate boss knows about the arrest and publicity angle. Matter of fact, I'm paying you out of petty cash. You're not to phone me at Central unless it's something terribly urgent. I'm in the phone book and... Here's my home phone and address. Call me at home every night. At about eight.”

“Why every night?”

“From now on it will be the only contact I'll have with you. You don't have to go into detail, merely that things are okay. However, even over my home phone you're never to say you are a detective. In TV one never knows when a phone is tapped. Every thing crystal clear, Mr. Moore? What does 'T.M.' stand for, by the bye?”

“It doesn't stand for 'bye-the-bye,'“ I wise-cracked, “but for Toussaint Marcus, Mrs. Robbens.”

“What a charming name. Toussaint. After the Haitian patriot?”

“Aha. My father was a student of Negro history, Mrs. Robbens.”

“While we're on the name bit, it happens to be Miss Robbens. I shall call you Toussaint and you may call me Kay.”

“Let me call you what I want,” I said, wondering about the “Miss" angle. She was sporting a thick wedding ring but perhaps on Madison Avenue it was better politics to be single.

“Shall we be on our way, Toussaint?”

“Keep it down to Touie, please. Where are we going?”

“Downtown. This is the address of the freight company that employs Thomas. I'll point him out, you take the ball from there.”

“Fine.” Happily my portable wasn't in hock and I typed out a receipt. As I put on my coat I went down the hall to Ollie's room; since he was civil service the apartment was in his name. I left eighty dollars in his drawer with a note saying I was paying up the two months' back rent I owed, and the balance was against future rent.

As we stepped outside a couple of cats hanging around the stoop gave us the eye, but quietly. Miss Robbens said, “We'll take a cab. About your expense account, don't overdo the padding. Be different if Central hired you directly but I—”

“Don't worry about it,” I said, walking her over to my Jag, which left her speechless—for once. I drove across 145th Street toward the West Side Highway, thankful I had gas.

In the fifteen or twenty minutes it took us to reach Forty-first Street she told me—for no reason—all about her unhappy first marriage, how lousy her husband had been. I listened politely, wanting to tell her it takes two to be good or bad. But I kept my mouth shut.

“... The kind of male slob who objected to my having a career. Career! It's a job. What he refused to understand was that in this world of nobodies, everybody has the yen to be a somebody. I'm sure you know that.”

“I'm afraid to even try to think about it.”

She turned in the low seat abruptly. “Don't ever make fun of me! I can't stand that; it's the height of rudeness!”

“I'm not making fun of you, Miss Robbens. And—”

“I told you to call me Kay.”

She sat in silence for a minute. As I cut off the highway she asked, “Why did you buy a Jaguar, Touie?”

“As you said, everybody wants to be a somebody,” I told her, cleverly, I thought. I checked the freight-company address in my notebook. It would be a waste of time trying to find free parking space, so I turned into a parking lot, paid the man a buck. Miss Robbens showed a lot of leg getting out but I knew that wasn't what the white attendant was staring at.

It was eleven fifteen when we reached the freight company. She said, “Thomas comes out for lunch at noon. We have plenty of time and I'm hungry.”

“Nothing but joints around here.”

“I don't mind,” she said, walking toward Eighth Avenue and into one of those overgrown bars that's a combination cafeteria and gin mill. There were some dozen men at the bar and tables, all of them white, of course. We gathered another round of “looks” as we got a couple of greasy hamburgers, beers, found a table. Two characters dressed like truckers were at a table near us, and one of them, a lardy redhead in his late twenties, began talking about us in a husky whisper. I didn't have to hear to know what he was saying.

Robbens was enjoying herself, babbling about places like this giving her a “refreshing sense of balance.” I kept an eye on Red because you never know what some whites will do. They might even kill you.

We finished our beers and Miss Robbens pulled the string—she had to smoke her pipe. We were a circus sensation now. Red snickered and he and his pal laughed too loudly at something which had as a tag line ”... she must like it.”

When Kay glanced at their table and wrinkled her nose as if smelling something rotten, I knew I was in for action, going to earn my dough the hard way. Usually I let most of that talk in one ear and out the other, but now I couldn't have my client's confidence in me shaken. Also I was steamed, at both Red and my client.

While I was wondering how I'd make my play, Red obliged by getting up for coffee. As he was returning to his table, I told Miss Robbens loudly, “I'll get you some water.”

“I don't want any....”

Pretending to look back at Kay, I walked into Red—hard. He weighed about 170, and my 234 pounds sent him flat on the dirty floor. Unfortunately he didn't spill the coffee over himself—only on the floor.

I said, “Sorry, old clumsy me,” and picked him up. I lifted him off the floor and onto his feet, squeezing the hell out of his arms, working my thumbs into his muscle. It looked as though I was lifting him with ease, but I had my legs set, was straining. He tried to move his numb arms and couldn't as he said, “Why don't you watch it?”

“I told you it was an accident,” I said slowly, waiting to see what he was going to do, watching his buddy at the table, too.

Red wasn't sure of himself; he'd taken a rugged fall. He decided not to do anything. Brushing himself off he said, “Lost a cup of Java, too....”

I tossed a dime on the counter. “Give sonny a refill,” and continued on my way to the water fountain, bringing a glass back to Kay.

Knocking the ashes out of her pipe, she squeezed my hand, whispered, “A magnificent bit.” She was happy as the devil.

“Look,” I said, keeping my voice down, “let's get one thing settled. Don't make a civil-rights case out of everything.”

“Me? Really, I fail to see where I—”

“I'm only saying when I want a cup of coffee I want coffee and not a scene. When I want to make a test case of something, I will. I'm not blaming you or anybody. Not even that redhead louse. I'm merely making a statement.”

“I don't get it.”

“When you go in for food you don't think a thing about it. But me, in a white restaurant, there's always a doubt, a... Forget it.”

“Forget what? Do you mean you only want to eat in Harlem restaurants?”

“Of course not. I mean, in the future, tell me what you want, food or excitement.” I was about to add she had a pipe, she didn't need me and the pipe to attract attention. Instead, I smiled as if we'd been kidding, said in a normal voice, “Only have about ten minutes; shouldn't we be on our way?”

“Yes,” she said, making a casual but smiling exit. Outside she said. “This disturbs me. I've always gone out of my way to be considerate to Negroes, but you're all so touchy.”

“I always go out of my way to be nice to you people, too.”

“Why must you make fun of me? I told you I don't like it.”

“I'm not making fun of you—you're the one who's touchy,” I told her, and told myself to shut up before she pulled me off the case. I gave her a best grin, added, “We're fighting over nothing. Let's get to work. We'll be too conspicuous standing opposite or outside the freight entrance together. Has Thomas ever seen you?”

“No. I've been quite a detective on my own. Here's all our data on him, home address, age, etc. This is a snap of him taken six years ago. He hasn't changed much, except he keeps his hair crew-cut, and it's a sandy blond now. You can pick him out from the snap, but if you want, I'll point him out.”

“To be on the safe side, you might as well finger him. Look, we'll stand across the street, but not together. Soon as you see him, start walking toward the corner. I'll stop you and ask for a match. Corny, but it will do. Without looking across at him, you'll tell me what he's wearing, to be doubly certain I have the right man. Keep walking and wait for me at the corner. I'll drive you back to your office.”

“Don't bother, I can take a cab. You'll phone me at my apartment around eight tonight and let me know how it's going?”

“Sure,” I said, putting the papers she gave me in my pocket.

She gave me the dazzling smile again. “You've made this a most interesting morning for me.”

“That's fine. People are coming out for lunch; let's get going.”

We were on the fringe of the garment district and the street started to fill up, mostly with women, many of them Puerto Ricans and/or Negroes. Miss Robbens stood near the entrance of a building, looking like a model waiting for a lunch date. I leaned against the window of a small coffeepot, packing my pipe.

Across the street, a steady stream of men and women came out of the freight-company building, which was a modest skyscraper housing a couple of dozen other concerns and dress factories. Miss Robbens walked toward me and we went through the match routine. I felt silly but as I lit my pipe she said in a fierce hammy whisper, “He's the one in the blue sweat shirt. See him?”

“Yeah. I'll phone you tonight.” She walked on and I watched her stop a cab.

Thomas was an easy make, tall and wiry with a stiff, military way of holding himself and a lean sharp face— except for his lips, which were thin and almost girlish. It was an easy face to remember, those lips and the strong square jaw. He looked about twenty-five, and if his dirty-blond hair was dyed it was a good job. He was wearing dungarees, a blue sweat shirt, and work shoes. With a couple of other young fellows, he marched into a luncheonette. Crossing the street, I read the hand-written menu pasted on the luncheonette window. Thomas was sitting at the counter, blowing on a cup of coffee. He had a cigarette behind one ear and his right cheek was pockmarked.

I went to the corner and bought an afternoon paper, looked through it, and twenty minutes later walked slowly back to the luncheonette. Thomas was lounging against the counter, the cigarette pasted to his funny lips, bulling with the other guys. From the relaxed way they were leaning against the counter, they did hard physical work: looked like pugs resting between rounds. I walked away as they came out, went across the street to lean against a parked truck and talk some more as they got a little sun. I stood in the lobby of a building, smoking my pipe and watching Thomas until he went back to work at twelve forty-five. Kay's info said he knocked off at five, leaving me free till then. Life was terrific; a month's work and I was getting it on a silver platter.

Back at the parking lot I found one of my whitewalls flat. Maybe the attendant did it because he saw a white woman with me, and maybe it was a leaky valve, as he said. My rubber was old. He kept a straight face and, since the tire wasn't cut, I had him put in a new valve and air.

Sybil works as a long-lines operator, a service assistant— a kind of foreman—and worked a split tour: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., then back at 8 p.m. to work till 11 p.m. She liked the tour because she didn't have to get up early and actually only worked six hours although she was paid for eight. I phoned her at the public phone in the locker room, left a message with some girl that I'd pick her up at two. I called Sid to thank him for recommending me, and to get a line on Miss Robbens, but he was out.

With an hour to kill I phoned Ted Bailey, but he was busy on another skip-tracing job in the Village. I told him to be in front of his building in a few minutes, I'd drive him downtown.

When I got out of the army in '48 and went to N.Y.U. on the G.I. Bill, I told Sid I needed a part-time job and he had Bailey take me on as a weekend guard at the department store. Sid is a real sweet guy; he was a pilot and we got drunk together in Rome back in '45, have been friends ever since. Bailey ran a fairly big agency, used seven men in the department store, and was okay. Didn't treat me any different than the rest of his men—he was huffy with all of us. I was called back into service in '50, and when I came out in '53—lucky enough not to go to Korea—the store had its own guards. They were using one of Ted's men for the Friday and Saturday rush. Ted said it wasn't worth bothering with, gave me the job, which was how and why I started my own agency.

Ted was waiting for me; I didn't have to double-park. He dresses and looks like a fat hick. Actually he's a rough oscar and far from stupid—as a dick. I get a bang out of the way he speaks in grunts—as if talking was a waste of time.

As he sat down beside me I saw he was still wearing old-fashioned high shoes. Ted said, “What a car for an investigator. An operator should have an ordinary buggy— nothing stands out like this. Jeez, what seats—like I'd slipped off a bar stool. Get my letter?”

“Thanks. I'll work on it tomorrow. Kind of busy now. Where do you want to go?”

“Drop me at Sheridan Square. So you're busy, Toussaint?”

He never called me Touie. “Things have picked up.”

“You're lucky. Whole damn racket is changing. Today you can't make your pork chops unless you're a regular mechanical whiz, and even then you need contracts. I just hired me a kid who got busted out of engineering school.”

“That's what I want to talk about. I'm thinking of expanding.”

He pulled out a cigar and began chewing on it. “Expand where? Why stay in this two-bit racket? Ain't enough money in Harlem to make it worth your while.”

“That's what I mean by expanding—out of Harlem.”

“Naw, naw. Too many guys in the game now. No work. Divorce stuff, skip tracing, guard duty; they don't amount to a hill of beans. Burns, Pinkerton, Holmes have the big guard jobs sewed up. Know why I hired this engineer, why I'm paying him as much as I take home? Only money around these days is in industrial spying. For that you need bugs and recorders and all kinds of electrical gadgets, and it adds up to nothing but a lousy overhead unless you got an 'in.'”

“Are you getting any of this industrial gravy?”

He gave his cold cigar a workout between his teeth as he said, “I'm getting the wrong end of the stick. Toussaint, in the old days, if a guy was sober and willing to put in hours, he could make a fair living, even big money if he wanted to be a rat and labor fink. Now... I got a... a small manufacturer, coming out with a new cheap line. His success will depend on when a competitor, the big company in the business, puts their product on the market. You see, if my boy comes out first, the big company can undersell him, so he has to catch them when they're in full production and no time to cut his throat. All he can pay is a lousy grand.”

“What's lousy about a thousand bucks?”

“What I'm trying to tell you, it don't mean nothing no more. Takes me a week and plenty of dough to find out where one of the big company's executives hangs around. Then I hire a broad to pick him up and we got her joint rigged like an electrical plant, with guys outside listening to the conversation. £ got to pay for three nights of loving and whiskey before Lover says anything we can use. The nut comes out to over nine hundred bucks—where's my pork chops?”

“Why did you take it?”

“Had to; only way to get in with these industrial big boys. You should see the bunk I give out with—make a presentation, everything typed up with wide margins, in an expensive folder. This guy, he plays golf with a real big boy, washing-machine manufacturer who's interested in learning about the new models due next year. But you see me on a skip-tracing deal now, still hustling for a lousy ten bucks. Pull over there, in front of the cigar store. I'll blow.”

I double-parked and Ted got out, straightened his clothes and cursed my bucket seats. Then he said, “You're still young enough to get in something else. If there ain't nothing in the racket for us wh—downtown boys, what's in it for you?”

“I'm doing okay.”

“Sure, for this month. And next month you're bouncing drunks at dances for pennies. Toussaint, hop on that case I gave you.”

“I will. Keep your blood pressure down, Ted.”

I drove down to Canal Street and parked outside the phone building, lit my pipe. Miss Robbens said the TV studio had other work for investigators; if I buttered her up, remained her pet Negro for a while—how much of it could I get? Ted had said the main thing was contacts; she could be that. First thing I had to do was move out of my bedroom-office, put up a big-time front. It would cost but it was worth the gamble.

Sybil came out with a group of women and as usual she liked the idea of my Jaguar waiting for her, the impression we both made on the other women—all of them white. Although my darkness was a real “problem” to Sybil, with the phone-company white girls she made a point of giving me a big fat kiss whenever I picked her up, as if to prove she was a Negro and proud of it, and all that.

Opening the door, I watched her walk toward the car, the sway of her solid hips. I hadn't seen her for two days and now she had a blond streak in her auburn hair—the newest style. It looked phony on her.

Sybil was what my old man used to call “tinted whites”: her skin was a creamy white and her hair was “good” (an expression that used to make the old man mount his soapbox at once). I suppose Sybil could have easily “passed.” She had the kind of colour and features that if you saw her in Harlem you'd assume she was “coloured.” If you saw her downtown you might think she was Spanish, if you thought about it at all. When I was out with Sybil I often collected the same kind of “looks” I'd picked up with Kay. I suppose the reason Sybil didn't pass was her old-fashioned ideas about colour—the prestige she thought her lightness gave her in Harlem.

Sybil was a habit with me. We had been going together for about three years. Her parents were from one of the islands and when she was a kid in Washington, D.C., Sybil had tried hard to lose her accent; now she worked harder at keeping it, spoke with a kind of clipped English. She was twenty-nine years old, had married a jerk when she was a kid, worked in an aircraft factory during the war to put her husband through med school. When the army took over his education this louse divorced Sybil and married a Chicago widow who owned real estate. Sybil was a habit, as I said, and most times a very comfortable habit. We hit it off, although sometimes her phony standards made me go straight up. Like the few times I'd realized how she felt about my dark skin, or like she would never come to my room, although Roy and Ollie knew all about us.

We kissed, her mouth cool, a good smell of perfume about her. “This is a surprise, Touie.”

Cutting across Canal to the highway, I said, “I was downtown on a case. A big fish, honey. I'm going to make fifteen hundred dollars!” As we raced up the highway, the Hudson rough and cold looking, I told her as much about the case as I could. Then my ideas about opening a real office downtown, perhaps going to school for a month or so to learn about these electrical gadgets.

Sybil thought I ought to pay up my debts, bank the rest, forget my big ideas. But of course she was thrilled about me getting the dough and we were doing fine. Two mistakes. I mean driving along the Hudson in my Jag.

We reached her brownstone basement one-room “apartment”—with a view of the river, if you stuck your head far enough out the window to break your neck (and for which she was paying seventy-two dollars a month). As I took off my coat and tie, I mentioned the post-office deal. That tore it.

“Oh, Touie, darling!” Sybil said, putting everything she had into a big hug. “That's the real news. When do you start?”

“I don't know,” I said, kissing her, running my hands through her soft hair. And wondering, for no damn reason, how many generations it took to produce her creamy skin. “I don't even know if I'm going to take it.”

I felt her tighten up before she stepped back out of my arms. “Why not? It's civil service, what we've always talked about.”

“Sure, S.O.P. for a Negro. That's why they call the main post office Uncle Tom's Cabin. Sybil, honey, this TV contract changes things. This is my big chance to start a real agency.”

“You sound like a little boy infatuated with private eyes,” she said coldly, taking off her coat. She was wearing a simple striped blouse and skirt that showed off her chunky figure. Sybil was very style conscious, mainly because she had this crazy idea a coloured woman had to prove she knew how to dress. The trouble was, often the “latest” styles weren't intended for Sybil's solid figure.

Hanging up my jacket I took out my wallet. “How much do I owe you, honey?”

She pulled back the Japanese screen from the kitchenette, started the coffee working. “Thirty-five dollars.”

I gave her fifty bucks extra. “Buy yourself something.”

Very pleased, she thanked me with a tiny kiss, pocketed the money, and went on with her cooking. I started on my specialty—a tossed salad.

She put on eggs and sausages, humming to herself. I knew exactly how her mind was working. As if I were an excited kid that needed cooling off, a moment later she said, “Touie, this is your big opportunity, so let's not talk nonsense. You'll sub for a few years, but even so, you'll be making about four thousand, and what with my job we can easily afford a new apartment, perhaps in the houses being built on 125th Street, interracial, too. We'll buy all new furniture, and a new car. Or a house out in St. Albans with—”

“What's wrong with my Jag?”

“Nothing, but in time we'll buy a new one. Darling, this is security, you know that as well as I do.”

“A top detective agency, that can mean real folding money.”

“All right, get it out of your system, talk about it. Be honest, dear, you only got into the detective business by chance. What do you really know about it?”

“Told you, one of the things I'm going to use the dough for, study up on these electrical things. Hon, the private-eye business has changed. Now it's finding out for CBS what new programs NBC has in mind. Big-money stuff. Ted Bailey gave me the lowdown today.”

“I suppose these big concerns are waiting to give the business to you—a black boy?”

“Seems to me I landed this new assignment just because I am coloured.” I don't like light-skinned people, even Sybil, calling me black.

“Touie Moore, all the time I've known you, you've been rubbing pennies together. If you weren't living in that dump with those other two no-goods, you'd have been on the street most of the time. Only real job you have is that department-store weekend thing, gives you a great big twenty a week. Bouncer, guard—how degrading can you get? Let's face it, you paid tax on seventeen hundred dollars last year. I never could understand why you insist on sticking to your badge. You're personable, well dressed, you could have made double that as a sales clerk. You told me yourself this Sid offered you such a job. But no, Dick Tracy has to keep on playing cops and robbers.”

“At least my time was my own, and now it's going to pay off.”

“What time was your own? Staying up all night at dances, holding up drunks, getting vomited on? You took all these civil-service exams because you know in your heart detective work is a blind alley.”

I set up the bridge table as she took out the dishes, opened a bottle of beer. “Sybil, I'm not saying it's been easy, or that I can make it. But neither am I rushing into carrying mail for the rest of my life. I want to think it over, carefully.”

“Go ahead, but there's nothing to think about. And let's not argue while we eat. It's bad for the digestion.”

We ate listening to radio music and I was mixed up. I could understand her point; hell, she'd been making triple my income for years. Still, I couldn't dismiss the agency idea as if Miss Robbens had never been in my office.

While I washed the dishes Sybil went into the large closet she called a dressing room, and which at one time had been the pantry of the house. I was sitting on the couch, lighting my pipe, when Sybil stepped out in a long lacy nothing, modeling it for my benefit. She came over, tripping like a Maltese kitten, sat on my lap, gently pulled the pipe from my mouth and planted a long hot kiss.

Sybil and I were most compatible, but now it left me cold. I was getting the full treatment, very full. I lifted her off my lap, dropped her beside me. Her eyes were big with surprise, maybe mocking me. I said, “Let's talk sense. You see, honey, another thing I thought we could do with the money is get married.”

“We'll get married the day you're appointed a regular carrier.”

I puffed on my pipe hard. If you can't get a doctor or undertaker, marry a civil-service worker, live in the Installment rut. “I asked you to marry me a year ago; why did you say no? Be honest.”

“I wasn't sure I was in love with you.”

“Honey, you haven't been seeing any other John, so that sounds phony to me. Was it because I'm dark?”

She shrugged. “Touie, what are you trying to make me say? All right, when I first knew you, I admit I didn't like the idea you were dark. But that certainly wasn't why I turned you down, why I'm doing it now. Touie, you know how hard it is for our people to land decent jobs, and when one does, she has to be careful—so many men want to marry her for a meal ticket.”

“That's stupid.”

“Touie Moore, don't you talk to me like that in my house! And it isn't stupid. You know what I went through with my louse of a husband. Seems when a man can't find himself, he finds me. I don't want—”

“I'm not your ex-husband.”

“And I never want you to be. Suppose we married now, you'd move in here and long as I kept my job you could play detective the rest of your life. I'm not saying you're lazy, Touie, because you're not. But we'd never get anyplace.”

“Where's 'anyplace,' Sybil?”

“You know what I mean; with a steady double income, we can live well. Touie, you're almost thirty-five. It's time you settled down. I know, the war ruined your chances for professional football, and the five or seven years you were an army officer—a nice vacation. This is the first civil-service job you've been called for; you simply can't pass it up!”

“You sound like I'm on relief.”

“You want honest talk? You aren't far from relief. Ollie carries your rent, I feed you. The Jaguar, the good clothes —that's all empty front.”

That hit me like a jab to the stomach. “And what the devil is living in a swank apartment, joining these dicty social clubs, the drunken dances, but a front? Sybil, the main thing is our being together. Marriage has to be more than a money partnership.”

“Movie dialogue, Touie, white movie dialogue. What's wrong in wanting to live in a new apartment? God knows I've lived in enough old rooms and run-down flats!”

“Nothing. I'm sick of hand-me-down apartments too. If my agency goes over big, if we give it a chance, we could live like that.”

“That's a dream; a post-office check is real.” She yawned, raised her arms and stretched with a soft lazy motion. “Don't argue, Touie. My goodness, if it makes you happy, keep the detective agency going in your spare time.”

I was too restless to sit, I walked around the room, flexing my muscles. The trouble was, Sybil was right; I did have a romantic conception of marriage. Still, she was making it too much cold turkey—now that I had the P.O. job she'd let me in as a full partner.

Sybil was watching me through half-closed eyes. With a catlike movement she stretched out on the couch, her arms under her head. “Think it over for a day or two; you'll see I'm right. Come here, muscles. Come over here.”

It was too corny. “I'm too tense for sleep.”

She gave me a knowing smile that said I was being silly; that I knew I'd come to her. “Then get me a cover. I'll get some sleep. I'm working overtime tonight.”

I covered her with a blanket, turned and walked over to the window. She called me once, softly, then a few minutes later she was sleeping. Sybil could sleep any time. I swung the TV around, tuned it in low, watched some overbright comic for a while. I felt lousy. Maybe it wasn't love, but I wanted to marry her. Was it wrong to also expect some sparkle instead of a merger of salary checks? Was that kid stuff? Might even take a honeymoon when Sybil had her vacation, fly out to L.A. and see my mother, who was living with my older sister and the stuffed-shirt dentist she'd married.

I went over to Sybil's dresser, got some stationery, wrote Ma a short letter, enclosed two twenties—first time I'd sent her money in a year. I didn't have a stamp. I quietly went through Sybil's bag and found one. At four I washed up, considered shaving, changed my shirt, and took off. After making sure the Jaguar was locked, I rode the subway downtown. I had to take Robert Thomas home and put him to bed, and it's impossible to tail anybody with a car in New York City.

I was in a real funk. It wasn't just thinking about Sybil that made me so blue. Another faint thought had been knocking at the back of my mind all afternoon: I'd always drawn the line at fink work and here I was... doing what? A lousy human bloodhound tracking a joker who had jammed himself years ago but seemed to have straightened out. I was getting set to send him to jail.... For the sake of justice? No, in order to sell more cereal or pimple cream, or whatever this TV sponsor peddled.

3

TRAILING a person in a five-o'clock rush is candy. Thomas was wearing an old windbreaker over his blue sweat shirt and a knitted cap. He was in a big rush. After grabbing a fast sandwich and cup of coffee at the same dump where he ate lunch, he actually ran to the subway. It was packed and I let myself be crushed into the same car he was riding, but at the other end. Looking over the heads of the other passengers, I kept the knit cap in view.

Thomas-Tutt wasn't going home. He got off at downtown Brooklyn and raced up the steps of an old squat building that was dark except for the lights of a trade school on the second floor. Making a note of the address and time, I went across the street and leaned against a building. Almost all the nearby stores were shut and the neighborhood was quiet, empty of people—especially coloured people. I got my pipe going. Although I couldn't see Thomas, I saw other young fellows working on the second floor. Some sort of electrical work; there were frequent flashes and sparks.

A young cop came by, swinging his club. He looked Italian. I tried to recall why I hadn't taken the police exam. Probably over-age. He glanced at me casually and I knew what he was thinking—what's this Negro hanging around here for? Only he wasn't thinking the word Negro. If I'd been roughly dressed, he probably would have asked me.

I smoked through another pipe, thinking of Sybil, trying to clarify my thoughts about her, about us. It was after seven and I was getting tired of standing around. I didn't have to do all this, I could wait at Thomas' home address, but I wanted to know all I could about him. The cop came back, walked over to me, said, “Looks like a cold night.”

“Guess it does,” I said, tightening up inside, a reflex action. I didn't want to have to flash my gold badge.

“Waiting for somebody?”

I nodded.

“Maybe you don't know this neighborhood—there's an all-night stool joint a couple of stores down. Be warmer.”

I relaxed all at once. “Thanks. I'm waiting for a friend of mine at the school over there.”

“They don't come out till eight. Welding school. Good trade to learn.”

“Maybe I will wait over some coffee. Thanks, officer.”

The coffeepot had a sad light in the window, which was why I hadn't noticed it before, and an even sadder-looking old man behind the counter. His face was full of wrinkles but his bald dome was tight-smooth. I sat on the first stool so I ordered the day's special—pot roast—and that was okay. I could see the school entrance across the street through the dirty window. I had another cup of coffee, paid the old man, picked up an evening paper he had on the other side of the counter. Miss Robbens' horse hadn't come in; neither had mine.

I wasn't much of a detective. While I was looking at the paper, eight o'clock came by, and Thomas and seven other young fellows came out of the school, talking loudly, and damn if they didn't head straight for this stool joint. His seeing me was the last thing I wanted but there wasn't time to get out. I motioned for a third cup of Java and went on reading the paper. They trooped in, kidding the silent old man, and Thomas went to the John. When he returned there was only one empty stool—next to me, of course.

He didn't sit; instead he stood behind one of the other fellows, and ordered pie and coffee. In the dull mirror on the wall behind the counter I saw one of the students give out with a big dumb grin as he asked, “What's the matter, Tutt? Sit down, Rebel.”

“Why sure, you bet I'll sit,” Thomas-Tutt said, with a very slight drawl.

My shoulders and hips were never meant for counter stools, and he had to squeeze in and brush up against me even to sit down. I tried to give him room, leaned as far away from him as possible, didn't react when he dug my shoulder harder with his elbow than I thought necessary.

He was still cramped in, could hardly bring his spoon up to his mouth. He kept on grumbling, half aloud, something about ”... they take over...” and the loud mouth at the other end egged him on with “You ain't eating fast, Rebel, lost your appetite?” I kept my face buried in the paper, trying to ignore them, which probably encouraged them. Finally Thomas spilled some coffee on himself, gave me a dig in the ribs as he reached over for a napkin, said in a disgusted voice, “Where Ah come from, this wouldn't happen!”

The joint was very quiet and I looked over the top of the paper, watched him take another spoonful of coffee and, with a big wink at the rest of the jerks, clumsily-on-purpose spill it on my sleeve.

It would only be worse if I didn't do something, so I stood up suddenly, knocking him against the next guy, said, “Relax, you're up North now and wearing shoes.”

It was the dumbest thing I could do, but I just couldn't hold myself in. If a rumble started and that cop was called, I'd have to show my badge and that would be the end of the job. I suppose what I should have done was walk out.

There was another absolute silence; perhaps my size made Loud-mouth stop grinning. But I'd already made the mistake; now Thomas had to make a play. He said, “You damn nigger!” and got up swinging his right. I caught his hand, twisted it hard behind his back, still facing his buddies. The pain made Thomas double over and when he tried to kick back at me I pulled him up sharply, then let go suddenly. He fell to the floor and his hat came off.

I said, “That wasn't smart. I have a lot of size on you. Behave and take it slow. I'm not looking for trouble.”

“I'll kill you!” he said, the phony drawl gone from his voice.

“If you get up, kid, you'll get hurt.”

His right hand went to his back pocket, he started to get up, then he ran his left hand through his blond hair and sat down. Big-mouth said, “Don't get in an uproar, Mister. He didn't mean nothing.”

“I know he didn't; that's why I don't want him to get up—and get hurt. Or you punks to get any childish ideas about rushing me.” I tossed a dime on the counter, for the last cup of Java, said, “It's all been good clean fun, fellows,” and walked out.

I was so mad at myself I could have cried. Moore the super-eye, lousing up fifteen hundred bucks! But hell, I couldn't have let him call me what he did.

I walked to the subway station and it was deserted. He'd certainly spot me if I hung around there. I went out and stopped a cab. Thomas lived on West Twenty-fourth Street, according to the data Miss Robbens had given me. I had the cabbie drive me to the Twenty-third Street station. There were a lot of people around, waiting for the morning papers to come up, most of them whites. I took a plant in a dark doorway across the street from the subway entrance, made a note of the cab fare. I tried to kid myself that the coffeepot incident hadn't been too bad; I'd heard his voice and that might come in handy. But I knew how dumb I'd been. If Thomas ever spotted me again he might think I was a real cop and take a powder. Putting on that tough act had been stupid for him too. Suppose the cops had run the both of us in, found out he was wanted? That must have been why he didn't get up, come at me with his knife.

I saw Thomas come out of the subway exit, alone. He stopped at a news-stand, talked to the old man running it, and bought a copy of Popular Mechanics. There was a chain cafeteria on the corner, a few stores from where I was standing. Thomas went in. He was a lad who loved to eat store food. I walked by the window. He wasn't eating but was talking to a bus girl in a white uniform. She looked about nineteen, one of these pale, delicate-looking kids you see among poor whites. Pale and delicate from not eating regularly when they were kids.

From the low, intimate way they were talking, the smile on both their faces, she could be his girl. After a few minutes he gave her hand a slight pat and left, walking up a block and into his street, then running up the steps of the small tenement that was now a rooming house according to an old sign over the entrance. I watched the windows but couldn't see his light. But then, I didn't know if his room was an outside one or not. I wondered how Kay had gotten all the info, even the apartment and room number. I was sure Thomas was in for the night, would read his magazine in bed.

I went back to the cafeteria, had a glass of water. All the help had their names in plastic holders pinned to the canvas uniforms. She was Mary Burns. I crossed the street and found a phone booth in a cigar store. Of course there were a lot of Burnses, including one at a nearby address that I put down. It could be her father, her home address. It was a few minutes after nine and I phoned Miss Robbens' apartment. I heard music and voices in the background as she answered. I told her what I'd done—but not about the coffeepot trouble—and in a guarded voice she said, “You don't have to work that hard, yet. But I'm pleased you're so conscientious.”

“Make things smoother when the program comes on and I really have to stick to him. Tomorrow I'll take him to work, check him again when he leaves. Call you.”

“That's fine, Touie, what are you doing now?”

“Nothing.”

“I have some people in, interesting folk, why don't you come up?”

“Well, I... uh ...” I fingered my face. Although I only have to worry about that “five-o'clock shadow” every other day, I needed a shave.

She mistook my hesitation for something else. “It's all right, these are liberal-minded people,” she whispered, maybe not realizing what she was saying.

“Wasn't even thinking of that. I need a shave.”

“Oh, forget that. Are you coming?”

“Okay.” If I expected Robbens to make contacts for me on Madison Avenue, I'd have to keep in close touch with her.

Outside, without thinking, I looked around for a barbershop. The only one I saw was closed, not that it would have mattered if it had been open. When I was nineteen I was downtown when I heard that a tobacco company was hiring Negro salesmen for summer jobs. I couldn't get a shave downtown, and by the time I went up to Harlem and back the jobs were filled. I bought a razor and blades in the cigar store, rode a bus up to Penn Station, shaved in the men's room. In the car crosstown to Miss Robbens' place on Thirty-seventh street, I jotted down the cab fare, and as an afterthought threw in the buck I'd spent for the razor.

She lived in a remodeled brownstone, and, judging by the number of them, fixing up brownstones must be the major industry in New York City. When she buzzed the door open I took a tiny elevator I could just about get into to the third floor. Kay was waiting at the door in tight buckskin pants, a dark blue turtle-neck sweater that did a lot for her figure and set off her neat face and copper hair. She had a silver coin belt around her waist and odd leather slippers with tiny bells on them. She led me into a large living room done in Swedish modern, including a working fireplace, and a crazy kind of wallpaper that seemed patches of violent colours.

There was a couple on the floor before the fireplace, a guy sprawled on the couch, and a woman making a shaker of cocktails. They all stared at me with studied interest, as if they'd been boring each other before and behold, a conversation piece enters. I wondered which of the men was her husband. After she hung up my coat and hat, Kay introduced me around. The couple on the floor were man and wife and he was a writer. He was also toasting slivers of potato in the fire, using a long wooden stick, and carefully eating each sliver himself as he took it out of the flames. His name was Hank. I never did get his wife's name. The guy on the couch was named Steve McDonald and Kay said, “Steve is the current white-haired boy at Central. He originated a new show I'm doing publicity for. And last, but by no means least, this is Barbara—we share this coop.”

Steve was one of these long drinks of water, with the slim build of a distance runner, and hair crew-cut so short it seemed to be painted on his narrow head. He had a habit, I saw later, of opening his eyes wide to emphasize whatever he was saying. Anyway he wasn't worrying about wrinkling his thick striped sport coat and flannel pants, lying in them.

Barbara was a trim babe with a young figure but her face looked washed out and tired and her carefully brushed hair was a silky gray all over, so it probably was a dye job. It was all wrong for her face. She said, “Hello, Touie, Kay has told me about you. Want Scotch or a hot buttered rum?”

Before I could answer Kay said, “Touie must try the rum.”

“As you wish,” Barbara said, pouring rum into a thick cup, then a slab of butter, a shake of some kind of spices. Walking to the fireplace, she knelt over Hank and swung a small copper teakettle around, poured some hot water into the cup. She was wearing a plain print dress and when she bent over her hips were lovely and full. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Steve, the couchboy, watching her hips. Then he popped his eyes at me and grinned.

I took the hot drink and Hank patted the rug beside him as he said, “Sit down. It isn't every night one can race back into history and drink with General Toussaint.”

“We were in Haiti last year,” his wife said.

“I'll try this,” I said, sitting on a pigskin hassock.

Everybody stared at me, with friendly curiosity. I sipped my drink, which tasted like soup with a kick. Kay announced, “Touie was a captain in the army. Has medals to prove it.”

“My press agent,” I said, wishing she'd shut up.

Steve raised himself on one elbow, gave me a mock salute, said, “Captain, suh, the troops are in the sun. How would you like them, rare, medium, or well done?”

“You trite bastard,” Barbara said.

Steve made big eyes at her. “I don't know, I thought it was pretty funny. Didn't you, Louie?”

“Not bad,” I said, taking another sip of the junk in my cup.

“The name is Touie, as you very well know,” Barbara said, carrying on some fight of her own with this Steve. “Like the hot rum?”

“Yeah,” I lied. “I've had them before, in Paris,” I added, to get in the conversational trend.

“We were in Paris in '53,” the writer's wife said, turning on the floor to face me.

There was a hi-fi phonograph set in a bookcase with a neat purring jazz record on. The writer's wife licked her lips, as if she were about to take a bite out of me, kicked the ball off with “I simply love Bessie Smith records, but they were so badly pressed; all the scratches come through on our hi-fi.”

As Kay lit her pipe and sat on the floor, the writer nibbled at a blackened bit of potato and said, “I can't bear to listen to her because it galls me to remember how she died, bleeding to death and they wouldn't take her in a white hospital. I can feel the pain in her voice.”

“Her voice gets to know you,” Steve said.

So then I knew they were going to bat “that boy” around, as one Negro writer calls this parlor game. I mean there's a certain type of white who loves to get going on the Negro “question” or “problem,” in fact feels he must break out into a discussion whenever he's around Negroes. I suppose talking about it is better than the attitude of most ofays who try to forget we're alive. But it had been a long long time since I'd been in this type of bull session.

Hank's wife started it by saying the Negro should migrate en masse from the South so we could use our “consolidated voting power,” whatever that is.

Steve and Kay immediately jumped into the water, then Hank and Barbara wet their feet. I finished my drink, managed to make myself a plain shot instead of the warm slop I'd been sipping. I was a very quiet and polite “problem,” and thought how Sybil would love this kind of b.s. As a matter of fact, they were talking so much they forgot about me—except for Barbara, who would glance at me now and then, as if watching me. Finally, as Kay finished a speech and stopped to pack her pipe, Steve popped his eyes at me and asked, “Touie, don't you believe the Negro would do better with a complete population transfer to the North?”

“I don't know,” I said, which seemed to annoy everybody: I was supposed to be an expert on race relations, I guess.

Kay said, “Certainly, despite the various forms of discrimination found up here, the Negro would have a better chance, a legal chance, to fight for his rights.”

“I've never been in the deep South,” I said, picking my words, careful not to talk myself out of a client, “but for one thing, I doubt if the average Southern Negro has the money to move his family anyplace.”

“Nonsense,” Hank's wife said, her voice almost angry. “If they really wanted to, they could get away—somehow.”

Kay said, “The entire history of the U.S. would have been different if the Negro had moved West right after the Civil War.”

“No,” Hank said, “they were promised forty acres and a mule, why should they have moved? Trouble was, the Republicans sold them out and screwed up Reconstruction.”

There was another battle of words and then Kay asked, “Touie, what do you think?”

I had to get off the fence, so I asked, “Why not a mass migration of Southern whites and leave the Negroes down in their homes? Be easier; there's less whites.”

Steve said that was nonsense and Hank and his wife weren't sure if I was pulling their leg. Kay laughed and winked at me. Barbara noticed it, bit her lip.

They batted it around again, off on another tack—that the white race was a minority in the world—and then the conversation died, or maybe they were just tired. Hank's wife jumped up—she had a cute figure standing—and said, “Damn, it's eleven. Our baby sitter is a high school kid and can't stay up late.” She nudged Hank with her toe. “Come on, hack, you said you were going to work tonight. Honest, I don't know how he does it, but he'll work till early in the morning.”

Steve made his big eyes as he said, “Perhaps the early-morning hours put him in an eerie mood. Someday I'd like to try a TV play of your last mystery. Have to water the sex, but I liked the plot gimmick.”

Hank got up and shook himself, belched, rubbed his belly and said, “Those damn potatoes. Try it soon, Stevie, I can use the money. I'm working on one now that ought to go over on TV. Deals with the numbers racket.” He looked at me, as if I was Mr. Digit himself.

Barbara said, “Touie should be a gold mine of information for you, Hank; he's a detective.”

The silence was like a fog in the room, everybody staring at me with renewed interest, except Kay, who sent a furious glance at Barbara.

“Well, the black eye!” Steve said, popping his eyes. “No offense, old man.”

“Say, are you a cop?” Hank asked.

“No. I—eh—well, I work in the post office but do some guard work on the side. Bouncer at dances, stuff like that.”

“Yes,” Kay put in quickly, “Touie used to be a football player.”

Steve yawned. “Maybe we ought to have lunch someday. I'm working on a factual crime series.”

“Only a matter of picking up an extra buck for me. Tell you the truth, I haven't worked at it in months,” I said, hoping that I was lying smoothly.

While Kay got their coats, Hank and his wife had one for the road. I took a shot of straight rum and Steve lit a cigar and walked around the room. Up close, he looked older than I first thought. His teeth were brownish and there were tired lines around his eyes. He could easily have been forty.

When Hank and his wife left, I moved over to the couch and Kay sat beside me. Barbara changed records on the hi-fi. Steve paced the room, puffing on his cigar nervously.

He said, “Hank's suspense stories are lousy. He's too too precious for himself. Truman Capote with a gun.”

There was an abrupt change in the atmosphere. Kay said, “This criticism comes to us live, from never-never land. Or is this just some Steve McDonald fill?”

Steve blew cigar smoke at her. “Don't waste your small talent; nobody is listening to the audition.”

“I think his books have a very subtle and skillful action movement,” Kay said, thumbing her nose at Steve. “You're jealous because he's in print.”

“To Hell with print. Right after the war, when I wrote my guts into my novel, I thought I was made. Damn thing got fine reviews—and never even sold the lousy five hundred advance I received. Hell, any TV show reaches a million times as many people. I must let you have a copy of the book someday, Kay.”

“I read it,” Barbara said. “It was forced, shallow.”

Steve threw his cigar into the fireplace. “What can a high-school teacher possibly know about literature? I've had a rough day; let's all catch the hot combo they have at the Steam Room.”

“Wonderful,” Kay said. “I'd like a few more belts.”

“Why go out? We have plenty to drink here,” Barbara put in.

“More fun getting conked in a night club. Come on, Touie.”

“I have to be up early,” I began, wondering what the devil she'd meant by conked.

“Don't we all? We'll take in the midnight show and leave. Coming, Bobby?”

Barbara, who seemed to also be Bobby, said in a weary voice, “Oh... all right.”

Kay tossed a mink cape over her shoulders as if it were an old shawl while Barbara slipped into a plain fitted cloth coat and a beret. They painted their lips, then bit into tissues to remove the excess lipstick. When they dropped the tissues on a table, Steve picked them up, said, “Like red Rokeach tests. God, I hate sloppy females.” He threw the tissues into the fire.

As I was getting into my overcoat, Barbara took Kay aside, whispered something in her ear. I heard Kay say, “Don't be silly. And so damn touchy!” She was angry, almost slammed her pipe on the table. I felt real lousy— knew damn well what Barbara was “touchy” about. She didn't want to be seen in public with me.

The elevator was so small we had to make two trips. Kay squeezed in with me. She was wearing a faint perfume but I was too mad to pay it any mind. She smiled up at me, her fingers playing with my arm. I said, “Barbara sure cut a hog... with that detective crack.”

“She's in one of her moods. But you handled it beautifully.” Her fingers stroked my bicep. “Muscles fascinate me.”

“What did you mean by getting 'conked'?”

“Conked? Oh, drunk, looped.... What did you think I meant?”

“I was just curious.” We stepped out into the tiny lobby to wait for Steve and Barbara. An elderly couple came in, gave us both that look as they waited for the elevator.

Kay played with my arm again, whispered, “How do you keep in shape?”

“At the Y. Stop feeling me like I was a horse.”

“Don't you like it?”

“I don't mix business and pleasure, to coin a shiny cliche.”

“Are you working now?”

“Let's not complicate an employer-employee relationship.” I flashed my white teeth as though joking it up, wondering how I could politely tell her I didn't especially want to sleep with her.

Steve and Barbara joined us. As we hailed a cab, Kay asked where the Jag was and that started a car discussion until we reached the Steam Room. From the outside it seemed to be a large store with a fogged window. I had that tight nervous feeling as we entered, but it fell apart soon as I saw the coloured band, and a Negro couple at a table. Checking our coats I looked the place over. It was low ceilinged with cartoon murals on the walls, the lights dim, and the combo beating out a quiet jazz. I'd been to Birdland, Cafe Society, and some of the “posh” spots, as Sybil called them, in and out of Harlem. But this really had an intimate air, like a movie night spot. The tables surrounding the small dance floor weren't jammed together, and nobody stared at us as we were given one near the bandstand.

When the waiter handed us menus, I was the only one to glance at it. There wasn't any cover or minimum, but at three bucks a shot they didn't need one. They ordered gin and tonic; I took Irish whiskey neat. The girls decided they had to go to the ladies' room and Steve said, “Never saw it to fail; second a woman gets anyplace she has to leave.”

“I'll have library send you a biology book tomorrow,” Kay told him, walking away.

We listened to the music for a while. It was very smooth, like the old Nat King Cole combo. Steve slipped me a line about writing the jazz novel someday. I wanted to tell him he could find material for a book in what a brown musician runs up against on a one-night-stands tour of the South, but didn't. We sipped our drinks and watched a babe putting her “all” into her dancing. “My Lord, what a Diesel motor that bimbo has,” Steve said. “How do you like going stag?”

“Stag?”

He flashed his eyes as he smirked, “Man, I see you haven't known Kay long. She and Barbara—Lesbians for years,” he added, like a kid mouthing a dirty joke. “Didn't you see them arguing before we left? Bobby didn't want Kay to take her pipe.”

I laughed—at myself. Shrugged as I told him, “Democratic country, everybody to their own tastes.”

He rubbed his nose with a slim finger. “You're so right. Thanks for bringing me up short. Did you really play much football?” he asked, changing the subject.

The girls returned and I told myself Steve was kidding; they both looked very feminine. Kay asked, “Dance?”

I stood up. “Okay, but I'm not much of a dancer.”

I took her in my arms and we glided around smoothly enough to pass for dancing. She said, “Sorry to leave you alone with Steve.”

“What's he got, the measles?”

“Oh Lord! Can't you tell, Touie? He's as queer as a six-bit coin. What are you grinning about?”

“Your hair is tickling my chin.”

“By radar? I'm inches from you,” she said, putting her head on my shoulder. “Do you like this place?”

“Aha.”

“I trust you'll pad it into your swindle sheet.”

“Don't worry about it.”

After another round of drinks I danced with Barbara and noticed she was wearing a wedding ring like Kay's. She gave me a workout, although Steve was on the floor with Kay and Barbara kept following them with her eyes. He was a good dancer. When she saw me watching her she smiled up at me, said, “Sorry. But I can't stand that smug creature. Because he finally has a TV show, he acts as if he had the world by the tail. And the boyish act: the crew cut and the college clothes—the ass. I don't know why Kay lets him hang around. Ever have the misfortune to read his book?”

“Nope.”

“Trash. Naturalism at its worst.” She rubbed her gray head on my tie. “How tall are you?”

“About six-two.”

So she told me what an athlete she'd been in college; talked until we sat down. Steve was wiping his face with a napkin, said, “This is actually becoming a steam room. Are you a Turkish bath aficionado, Touie?”

“Never in one.”

“No, I suppose not,” he said, motioning for the waiter. Instead of a drink I ordered a club sandwich. The show came on. The “show” was a tall girl with a faraway look on a powdered death-mask face, her eyebrows painted in like two darts. She sang a torch song—off key. After the second song it got to me, or maybe I was getting a little high.

The sandwich was dressed in pants and had a crazy border of pickle chips and olives. It impressed me, seemed the most high-class sandwich I'd ever had. I paid more attention to it than to Kay's knee wearing my trouser thin.

I ate slowly, listening to the weird singing, glanced around the table. I couldn't fully make any of them: they were all a little phony. So was the Steam Room. Yet I'd long lost the blue mood Sybil had put me in. I'd forgotten the dumb fight in the coffeepot, even about blowing the whistle on Thomas. This was big time. I had to admit that, phony or not, I liked it.

It wasn't even much of a shock to admit I liked playing the pet Negro... well, at least a little.

4

I WAS between the sheets before two—my own sheets. I'd insisted upon splitting the thirty-one-dollar tab with Steve, although Kay had whispered, “Let him take it, he comes from a loaded family.” We'd taken the girls home, then I dropped Steve off at Sixty-fifth Street and taxied all the way uptown like a big shot.

At six the alarm dragged me out of a deep sleep. Dressing quickly in slacks and an old sweat shirt, I was parked on Thomas' block when he came out at 7:35 a.m. I followed him to Twenty-third Street, where he stopped for breakfast, and at 8:21 a.m. I watched him enter the freight-company building, whistling cheerfully.

I drove home, lucked up on a parking space. I had a glass of milk, picked up a new Jet Ollie had brought in, and hit the sack, reading myself to sleep.

I awoke after one, came awake and hungry under a shower. Sybil phoned as I was dressing; I'd forgotten it was her day off. She horsed around about wanting me to drive her to a beauty parlor on 126th Street, to have her hair touched up, and finally asked what she really wanted to say—had I decided to take the P.O. job? I said I still had time to make up my mind and at the moment only food was on my brain. She said she was making lunch. I drove over to her place, decided not to say anything about last night.

Sybil looked all rested and pretty, sort of springy. Her lips were a very lush red. I wanted to kiss her but let it alone. I was still annoyed by her putting things on a my-becoming-a-postman-or-else basis. But I was feeling too good for an argument. When I drove her to 126th Street I had a couple of hours to kill, considered taking a swim at the Y, then decided I might as well do some work for Ted Bailey.

His letter said the James woman was fifty-two years old, had worked in a hospital, and her last address was a crummy rooming house on 131st Street. There was a set of penciled instructions pasted next to the bell outside this ancient private house: ring one for Flatts, two for Adams, and a Stewart—probably on the top floor—got a serenade of ten bells. Of course there wasn't any James listed, but some of the names were so faded you couldn't make them out.

I went down to the basement and rang. A teen-age chick, wearing overbright lipstick, narrow dungarees, a club sweater and a plaid men's shirt answered the door. She was chewing gum and very sure of her young figure and cute face—no one could tell she wasn't the sharpest chick this side of nothing. I figured Mrs. James hadn't moved, merely arranged with her landlady to give the bill collector the runaround. She'd changed jobs, but a person with a combination stove-refrigerator doesn't flit from room to room.

When I asked for Mrs. James the girl showed me how well she could snap her gum as she asked, “Who you?”

“Friend of hers, in town for the day.”

“Friend, she moved out last month.”

“Do you know where? I haven't got much time and I'd like to see her.”

She shrugged, both of us watching what danced. “Naw. I think out on Long Island someplace.”

She wasn't much of a liar. “Too bad. I have some money for her. Phoned the hospital but they told me she left. Now I can't mail it to her either. Well, maybe I'll run into her one of these days.”

Miss Fine Brown Frame gave me a practiced look through her long eyelashes. “What town did you say you came from, big boy?”

“Drove in from Chicago. Her cousin lives there.”

“Well...” The bright eyes ran over me slowly, decided my clothes looked like money. “Tell you a secret, she does live here. Five bells. But she won't be home till four. She's ducking one of them damn credit companies, that's why I gave you a wrong steer before. You either come back here, or call her at the Boulevard Hospital—that's over in the Bronx—tonight. She started working there last week.”

“Thanks. And, honey, they sure grow some fine young stuff around here.”

She snapped her gum with obvious pleasure. “Yeah man, but they don't grow no corn. This is the Big Apple, buster.” She shut the door with a little curtsy. Kids today; everything for effect.

I drove along 125th Street, found an empty space, dropped a dime in the meter. One-twenty-fifth is something like a small-town main street; wait long enough and you must see somebody you know. I'd hardly got my pipe going when two clowns rushed over to the Jag, said, “Touie! How's every little thing?”

“I'm just here,” I said, shaking hands, wondering who they were. Turned out we'd been in the army together. I left the Jag and took them into Frank's, bought beers, and made a lot of small talk about that magic land—old times. I left after the second beer, drove back to 13151 Street, pressed the bell five times.

A small but spry-looking coffee-brown woman opened the door a moment later. Her face was old and her hands work-worn, but her eyes were young and she had an excited way of talking, gushing like an eager young thing. When I asked, “Mrs. James?” she said, “You must be the Chicago man Esther said was just here, my cousin Jane's friend. How is she? I keep meaning to write her but... Excuse me, step inside.”

The narrow hallway was in need of paint, a thready carpet ran up the wooden steps—a firetrap. We seemed to be alone and I said, “I don't know your cousin, Mrs. James,” and flashed my badge. “Ducking payment on that stove-refrigerator is the same thing as stealing.”

She seemed to age in a split second, to shrivel up as she fell against the wall—as if I'd socked her in the stomach. Her face was a sickly brown, and then her eyes got angry and she pulled herself together, was really boiling. “Why you goddam lousy stoolie! The 'man' downtown can always manage to find one of our folks to be a Judas! I never—”

“Cut that talk,” I snapped, both of us keeping our voices low, hers a hiss.

“Why?” she asked, sticking her thin face forward. “Why should I keep still? You going to hit me? Try it; I'll be the last brown woman you ever lay a hand on!”

“Mrs. James, take it easy. I'm only doing my job. Stop all the big talk about the 'man' and anybody threatening you. If you ran a store and somebody tried a skip on you, you'd be the first to raise the roof. Listen to me, you're a decent, hard-working woman, and I know you wouldn't think of stealing, but—”

“Stealing? That damn company is the crook! I paid $320 for that kitchen combination, plus interest and handling charges. Fifty dollars down and twenty a month. Now you listen to me! A month—one month, mind you—after I bought the combination I see the exact same thing in Macy's for $140! What do you think of that? I go down to the company and damn if they ain't selling it for $260 themselves. Well, I made up my mind I work too hard for my money to give it away. I've paid them f 150, plus their lousy charges, and that's all they're going to get!”

“Mrs. James, why do you get involved in these installment deals? It's always cheaper to buy anything outright from a big store.”

“You talk like you have a paper head I Where am I ever going to get $140 all at one time? I got to buy on installment. You think I have anything to spare on that little salary they pay me at the hospital? Talk sense, boy!”

I felt both lousy and angry—mad at her. Most of these installment joints make their money playing the poor for suckers. I was sore at her for being so dumb; she probably could have gone to a big department store and still bought the damn thing on time. But somehow it always turns out that the people who can afford to pay the least end up paying the most. Still, that wasn't my business. I said, “Look, Mrs. James, let's both of us talk some sense. You don't have to tell me how hard you work, that you're probably overpaying for your room, your food, and everything else. But nobody twisted your arm to make you buy this kitchen combination. Sure, you made a bad deal, but you're a grown woman and you signed a contract. I don't have to tell you the law is on their side. They can come up today and yank the combination out and you haven't a legal peep. It's a mess, but you got yourself into it with your eyes open. Now, you'd better decide what you're going to do—lose everything or get up to date on your payments.” The words had a rotten taste as I mouthed them.

She began to weep, hard tiny tears. “A person tries to live decent, get a little joy out of life and—”

“A punk sticking somebody up with a gun can say the same thing.”

“I'm not a crook! Don't you dare call me that. I never did a dishonest thing in my life! You... you... big black bastard!” Her wet eyes were glaring fiercely at me as she said, “There, I never called anybody that before— may God cut out my tongue—but I say it to you, you with a skin as dark as mine!”

I couldn't have felt worse if she'd spit in my face. I mumbled, “Lady, I'm only doing my job, a routine—”

“Job? Is it your job to torture and help swindle your own people? 'Man' downtown gets the pie and you croak about a job and take the crumbs. All right, tell 'em I'll send a money order tomorrow, get up on my payments. Now get out of my sight!”

“How much do you still owe?”

“About f 170. Get out of here, I said I'll pay.”

“How much can you pay today?”

“What you want, my blood?”

“Goddammit, stop the dramatics! I'm trying to help you. Maybe I can get them to make a settlement.”

“Well, even though I didn't intend to pay, I've been saving the payment money. I suppose I could give them a hundred dollars by the end of the week.”

“Is there a phone here?”

She nodded down the hall. There was a pay phone behind the steps. I phoned Bailey, told him, “Ted, I'm with Mrs. James. She's strictly a deadbeat. Ill and out of a job. I doubt if she'll be able to work for months. She owes $170 but thinks she can borrow $100 from a friend, if they'll settle. Otherwise, you'll have to take the combination back, and it's in rough shape. The hundred is all the dough she has in the world, all she can raise. I'd advise taking it. She can bring it down in a day or two.”

Ted said he'd check and phone me back. I told him to make it fast, to remind the company they'd already made a profit on the deal, that the combination was now selling for half of what they had charged her.

I lit my pipe and waited in the narrow hallway, neither of us talking. Mrs. James stared at me with sullen eyes, hating my guts, my good clothes. It was four seventeen. Fooling around with this two-bit case would make me miss Thomas.

Ted called back, said it was okay. He wanted to speak to the old lady and she told him she'd have the money in the mail by the end of the week. “Yes, yes. I understand. Positively. Yes!”

When she hung up, slamming the receiver down, I said, “Now, Mrs. James, when you pay make certain to get a receipt saying 'paid in full.' Or if you mail in the money, get a check from a bank and write on the back of it, 'Final and full payment for kitchen combination, as per agreement.' Next time you buy anything on time, think what you're doing first, and don't start whining afterward.”

“You, get out! You've done your 'job!'”

“I went out on a limb for you, saved you seventy bucks, Mrs. James.”

“You waiting for a tip?”

“Of course not, but at least, well... I did my best for you. I mean, I understand the spot you're in, we're all in.”

“Thank you. Thanks for nothing!”

I shrugged, put on my hat, and headed for the door. She-stood at the edge of the steps, still looking at me as if I were something a dog had dropped. I walked out, slamming the door hard, drove downtown. Traffic was heavy and it was after five when I reached the freight company. Cursing, I drove toward Brooklyn and the welding school, changed my mind, double-parked in front of the cafeteria on Twenty-third Street. Thomas was inside having supper, his bus-girl friend hovering around his table, both of them laughing and wisecracking.

I felt a little better until a cop came over and asked what I was doing. He was an old cop, with a red-veined white face and a lousy set of false teeth. When he talked just the lower part of his mouth moved. I told him I was waiting for a friend and he said I couldn't double-park on Twenty-third Street, didn't I know that? I said I was sorry and started the Jaguar and he asked for my license. If he had a cellophane head I couldn't have seen his little bird brain working any clearer: a coloured man in an expensive car —S.O.P.—it must be a stolen heap. I showed him my license and registration, praying Thomas didn't look out the window and see me.

The cop grunted, “I'll give you a ticket the next time I catch you double-parking,” as he handed my license back.

“I don't doubt that you will.”

“Get fresh and I'll give you a ticket right now!”

“Who's 'fresh'? You said something and I answered you,” I said, crawling slightly, all the anger I'd felt at Mrs. James welling up in me.

He took out his notebook, muttered, “I'll just take down your name and license number, smart guy. Be sure I remember it.” His lower lip was moving like a ventriloquist's dummy.

I shut up; no point in talking myself into a ticket. When he finished scribbling I asked, “Can I go now?”

Another grunt: “Yeah.”

I found a parking space over on Ninth Avenue and walked back to take a plant across the street from the cafeteria, telling myself I was a dummy to talk to the cop; if he saw me now it might start another verbal fight.

Thomas took his time eating and I was getting hungry myself. Finally he and Miss Burns checked their watches and he walked out and up to his room. I stopped at the corner, where I could keep an eye on his house without being conspicuous. He came out at seven, wearing a shirt and tie under his windbreaker, his blond hair carefully brushed. He picked up his girl in front of the cafeteria and they went across the street and into a movie.

I phoned Kay but Barbara said she wasn't in and I left a message that everything was under control. Bobby didn't ask any questions. I phoned Sybil to ask if she wanted to eat Chinese food. She said she'd already eaten but would have supper waiting for me, and to bring in some beer.

After circling Sybil's place several times in even larger circles, I found a parking space, brought in a couple bottles of High Life. Sybil gave me a plate of reheated stew with gummy rice, garlic bread, and salad. She had her hair up in curlers, which I hate, but otherwise she was in a good mood, didn't even mention the P.O. once. I kept thinking about Mrs. James and I told Sybil about it and she said, “What can you expect from poor Negroes?” Only she didn't say Negroes and I got boiling and she sat on my lap, kissing me slowly and asking between each kiss, “What's the matter with my big Touie?”

Of course it was corny as the devil, but it worked. I looked at Sybil's pretty face, and I thought about the TV job and wondered what I had to be angry about.

After I washed the dishes we drank the beer and watched TV, then played gin while waiting for the fights to come on. About eleven, right after the news, as we were settling down to watch a late movie, an English one, the phone rang. Sybil said it was for me. Ollie said, “Knew where to find you, old man. Look, you just got a phone call from a woman named Miss Robbens. She said it was very important I reach you at once. I told her I could find you and she said to give you this message: you're to meet her in Tutt's room, inside the room, at exactly midnight.”

“In the room? Ollie, sure you have that straight, inside the room?”

“You too? I'm going to resign as your private secretary. Look, I wrote the message down and she even had me repeat it over the phone. She sounded excited, kept asking if I could reach you for sure. I told her not to worry, I'd carry it to you. Got it, sleuth? Exactly midnight in Tutt's room. Doesn't give you much time.”

“Yes. You're certain I'm to go into the room?”

Ollie sighed. “Told you I wrote it down, repeated it back to her. I'm reading it now. You straight, old man?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Ollie.”

I hung up and dialed Kay. Barbara answered, sounding half asleep. She told me Kay was out, that she hadn't seen her since morning. Then she suddenly asked, with new life in her voice, “Touie, haven't you seen Kay tonight?”

I said no and hung up. As I put on my tie and shoes, Sybil asked, “What's up?”

“I don't know.”

“You look worried.”

“I sure am. Something's happened on this Madison Avenue TV deal, something I don't understand.” I kept thinking that if Kay wanted me to meet her in Thomas' room, the secret must be out and the whole damn publicity deal off—and I was off the case too.

“If you were in the P.O., you wouldn't have to go chasing off in the middle of the night or—”

“Not now, honey,” I said, kissing her good night. “Maybe I'll be back.”

“No, you don't, don't you break into my sleep—I have to make time tomorrow. I'm going shopping before I go into work.”

“Then I'll phone you on the job, as usual.”

It was eleven eighteen when I started for my car, then hailed a cab on Broadway. I wouldn't have time to play hide and seek with a parking space downtown. I got out my notebook—Thomas-Tutt had room 3 in apartment 2F. Damn, if I was off the case I'd have to give back part of the retainer and I had less than fifty bucks on me. Although Kay had said a minimum of a month. Of course I didn't have to give back a dime, legally, but I wanted to retain Kay's good will. If there was a snafu, why call me to his room? Kay could phone me the deal was off and that would be that. Or did going to his room mean I was still working? Or ...

I sat up straight as the cowboy at the wheel cut into the highway on two wheels. This could only mean one thing— Thomas had taken a powder! Sure, Kay had found out— somehow—he'd flown the coop, and I was up the creek. Me and my big detective agency, couldn't even handle a simple shadow job. But hell, she'd told me herself I only had to check on him twice a day until his case was televised. He was taking his girl to the movies a few hours ago, unless he was smarter than he looked. Thomas wasn't getting ready to run. And how would Kay know? Or was she having somebody else check on Thomas too? And on me?

I paid the cabbie off on the corner. It was still seven minutes before midnight. The house and the block were quiet. I stood in front of the house for a moment. Why exactly at midnight? Two middle-aged stinking winos came out of the house, gave me the usual look, but with bleary-eyed trimmings. As I went up the few steps to the doorway, they wobbled down the street, glancing back at me and mumbling something.

I stood outside 2F, a dim and crummy hallway smelling of stale food and various human stinks. Harlem didn't have a monopoly on lousy houses. I tried the doorknob; it wasn't locked. Another hallway, narrower, hotter, with rooms opening off it. There was a dirty metal “3” on the door nearest the main door. I listened and didn't hear a thing, but there was light coming through the crack under the door. I rapped gently, waited a few seconds, turned the knob and the door opened.

I suppose as soon as I saw the messed-up room I knew the score. Only I couldn't quite believe it.

It was a small room, with only a bed and a metal dresser —all the drawers out and ransacked. Thomas seemed to be sleeping in bed, covers pulled up over his head. I had a sudden, sickening hunch the person in bed might be Kay. Closing the door, I stepped over Thomas' pants and wind-breaker on the floor, and then I saw the wet blood on the gray pillow. There was a large pair of bloody pliers on the floor.

Pulling back the covers I saw the back of Thomas' head bashed in. He was face down, blood all over his head and shoulders, blood still wet. It was even splattered on the cheap-pink painted wall behind the bed.

I stood there like a dummy, still holding the cover with my fingertips, knowing I had to think damn fast, and afraid of what I was thinking. I didn't have to be a detective to know what all this meant.

Maybe I stood there a few seconds, even a few minutes. There were footsteps on the stairs, at the outside door. In the back of my mind, the only part that was thinking clearly, I expected them. I dropped the blanket as the door flew open—a thick-faced white cop stood there. He wasn't expecting a body but when he saw the bloody bed his gun flew out of his heavy blue overcoat pocket like his hand was on springs. His deep voice said, “Keep your hands in sight, up, you black sonofabitch! Got you dead to rights.” Maybe it was my imagination but I thought he sounded almost happy—thinking of promotion.

What I'd known since I first got Ollie's call came into sharp focus: I'd been had, been set up for this from the go. Now my mind was clear and racing—the cops would learn about the fight in the coffeepot when they checked at the school, the beat cop in Brooklyn would remember me, so would the fat cop who wanted to give me a ticket at supper-time. And the winos seeing me enter the house a few minutes ago. I'd been had but tight.

I held my hands up, shoulder high. The cop was alone, probably the beat cop. Exactly at midnight. The timing was so simple, a phone call to the precinct at five to midnight saying there was trouble in room 3, apartment 2F, and the post cop catching me.

He was staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I didn't bother making words. It boiled down to a white cop and black me, and he had the “difference” in his hand. I'd look silly trying to explain... all I could do was stand very still.

In that split second something my old man used to say rushed through my mind. “A Negro's life is dirt cheap because he hasn't any rights a white man must respect. That's the law, the Dred Scott Decision, son. Always remember that.”

I was remembering; any move on my part and I'd be dead.

“Why don't you robbing bastards stay up in Harlem where you belong instead of coming down here to rob and mug people?” His voice was shrill, his white face working with rage as he stepped toward me.

Within striking distance, he raised his gun to whip my head. The second the gun was out of line with my face, with reflex action, my left shot out and grabbed his gun hand by the wrist. My right knee thudded into his groin and my right hand clubbed him on the side of the jaw.

He didn't have a chance to fire at the ceiling; he crumpled in a heap on the floor, moaning, his heavy mouth open wide, fighting for air. I stepped over him, closed the door, walked down the stairs as fast and quietly as I could.

5

THE STREET was empty.

I tried to hold my shaking legs from running as I walked toward Seventh Avenue. A store-window clock said it was nine minutes past midnight. I walked up a block, stopped a cab, told him to take me to Grand Central Station.

It was neat—I'd been framed like a picture. Wasn't only the murder troubling me. In the eyes of the police I'd committed a greater crime than murder—I'd slugged a cop. They'd beat me crazy in the station house before I was even arraigned on the murder rap. It was all so pat, not even a tiny loophole. I didn't have the faintest smell of an alibi. Judging by the wetness of the blood, Thomas had been killed ten or fifteen minutes before I got there. It had all been set, to the smallest detail. I was finished. I was dead. With the cop-slugging over my head, I was worse than dead.

The hell of it was I knew the killer, but that didn't help me. Of course it had to be Kay. Everything added: picking a coloured detective, knowing I'd stand out; the hush-hush bunk, paying me out of “petty cash”—I couldn't even prove I was working for her. But what did Kay have against Thomas? Or was the whole TV pitch a lie?

As I paid the cabbie at Grand Central I put on an act, saying I hoped I could still catch the New Haven train. The police would be checking all cabs soon.

I walked through the station, then down Lexington to Kay's house. I was real mixed up. Somehow I couldn't picture Kay killing him like that, not bashing his head with the pliers. I could see her using a gun but not getting close enough to bust his head. That didn't figure, but everything else added to Kay. I was taking a big chance seeing her. I could be walking into a room full of cops: she'd certainly be expecting me, have a trap ready. But I could hardly be in a tighter squeeze than I was now and I had to see her, confront her. It was my only hope: these perfect-crime jokers sometimes plan too carefully, trip themselves.

I stood on the corner, didn't see a soul around her house. I walked down the block fast, ducked into her doorway. I couldn't risk ringing a bell to open the door. It was an old door. Holding the knob with one hand I leaned back and hit the door just under the lock with a hip block. It jumped open with a dull sound that was magnified by the stillness. I waited; the ground-floor apartment doors didn't open. I stepped in. The lock wasn't too badly sprung—I managed to close the door. I rode the midget elevator to Kay's apartment, rang the bell.

There wasn't a sound. I rang again, long and loud. There was the padding sound of slippered feet approaching the door; Barbara asked, “Who is it?”

“Touie.”

“Who? Oh.... It's late,” she said, opening the door.

I pushed by her, closed the door. She was wearing a kind of thin red ski pajamas and she looked tired, maybe a little drunk. I walked and pushed her into the nearest chair, told her, “Sit still for a second.” I ran through the apartment, keeping the doors open to see if she went for the phone.

Bobby was alone.

When I returned to the living room she was fumbling at lighting a cigarette, her hand shaking badly. “What's all this about?”

“Where's Kay?” I asked standing over her.

“I wish I knew. No, I wish I didn't know.”

I grabbed her thin shoulders, shook her. “Don't play it cute. Where is she?”

Bobby pulled herself together, tried to push my hands away as she asked, “By what right do you place your hands on me?”

Under other circumstances it would have been for laughs. I shook her again. “Damnit, sober up. I'm in a jam. Where's Kay?”

“I took sleeping pills some time ago; my head isn't very clear. Really, I don't know where Kay is. What's your trouble, Toussaint? Oh, that beautiful name. I wish I had a name like—”

“A man's been murdered and the police are looking for me. Does that get through to you? Murder! Kay framed me, set me up for this rap.”

Bobby's eyes seemed to brighten, become almost normal. “Kay? Oh my no. Kay can be silly and mean, but never vicious. Really, a murder?”

“Yes, goddamnit, really!”

“Who?” Her eyes went wide and she tried to stand as she said, “Not Kay!” and her voice rose to a scream.

I pushed her back into the chair. “Cut it out, and wake up. The guy Kay hired me to watch, he's been killed. How much do you know about this TV stuff?”

“All of it. Sorry I nearly ruined everything last night. Kay bawled me out as if—”

“Bobby, listen to me, I don't have time for small talk. I don't have time for anything. Where's Kay?”

“With a so-called man.”

“Who? Her husband?”

She gave me a long look, then threw her head back and laughed hysterically. I shook her hard and she said, “She's with that pansy writer Steve. I'm her husband.” She added this last with quiet dignity in her voice. Her eyes were proud as she stared up at me and said soberly, “Yes, I'm what is known as the Butch in our setup. Now what's all this nonsense about Kay framing you?”

“She left a call at my office for me to go to Thomas' room at midnight. I found him murdered; a moment later a cop came busting in. It all fits; the reason Kay hired me, knowing a Negro would be easy to spot, a setup for this frame. But I'm going to find Kay, get the truth out of her if it's the—”

“Are you saying Kay killed this man?” Bobby cut in, crushing her cigarette on the glass table top.

“You say it, say it any way you want.”

“That's ridiculous. And Kay didn't pick you for this job, I did.”

“You? Don't cover for her. Bobby, I don't want to get rough but this isn't the time for stalling!”

“I'm not stalling. I'm telling you the truth. I met your friend Sid at a party and somehow he mentioned you. Kay had told me about this publicity stunt of hers, about hiring a detective. She was looking forward to it... and... I knew she was restless. I've seen it happen before. She goes off with a... a... man. Of course she's always come running back to me after a night or two, but I live in a nightmare that she won't return. Can you understand how much I love that girl?”

“Skip the love story. Why did you pick me?”

“No, you can't understand what Kay means to me. I simply told her about you, knowing full well she'd like the idea of... I mean, of you being a Negro. I was so pleased when I saw you last night, all your muscles, your... manliness. You were perfect for the affair.”

“Affair? What the devil are you talking about?”

“My dear Toussaint—that exciting name—isn't it obvious? Any relationship between Kay and you could only be temporary, hardly permanent.... You're a Negro.”

“For—! I've had enough of this nonsense, where's Kay now?”

“Wherever she is, it's your fault. She was disgusting, pawing you last night, but you didn't react. Now she's spending the night in some hotel with that horrid creature Steve. That's what worries me. Kay usually goes for the brute type.”

“What hotel?”

“I'm sure I don't know.”

I shook her again. “Damn you, this isn't a game I What hotel?”

The crazy thing was, as I shook her a hard voice, almost a man's voice, barked, “Get your damn hands off me! I told you I don't know. If I knew, do you imagine I'd be sitting here? I'd go up and drag her back home!”

I walked around the living room, thinking hard. If what Bobby said was true, and I had this feeling it was, then it knocked the props out on my Kay-framing-me idea. But if it wasn't Kay, who did frame me and why? Who could possibly have known about my tailing Thomas? Supposed to be all top secret, just Kay and her boss—and Barbara. “What's the name of Kay's boss?”

“I don't know, Brooks something-or-other. Kay calls him B.H.” She shook her head. “Forget about him; he's been out in St. Louis opening a new station for Central. Kay mentioned he had phoned her from there this afternoon.”

“You said you hadn't seen Kay since yesterday morning.”

“She phoned me at school, during lunch hour, to—to tell me she was leaving me.” Bobby began to weep.

I stood there, listening, for some stupid reason, to her crying. It didn't sound phony. Things had been simple when I came up here: I was a dead duck with one possible out— find Kay and get the truth from her, beat it out of her if necessary. Now...? I didn't rule Kay off the list, not till I knew where she'd been when Thomas was killed. But I'd been certain she'd framed me from the go, and that wasn't so. Now...? Now I realized the only way to save my neck was to find the killer before the police found me. I was mixed up: somehow relieved and even encouraged by knowing Kay hadn't double-crossed me, and a little frightened that I was on my own. I really wasn't a detective but a strong-arm bouncer, a slob good at scaring women like Mrs. James. And no one but me, a lousy detective, could save my life!

I began pacing the room again, trying to think logically. From the little I'd seen of Tutt-Thomas he appeared to be a hard-working joker, living down his past. That didn't rule out the possibility he was in a jam here, but it was unlikely.... He had a record, would be careful. If he was doing anything shady here, why would he be sweating at the freight company, going to a trade school? Hell, he hardly had enough free time to get in trouble. He was strictly small time, a home-town hoodlum.... Only one thing would make sense: some old buddy had knocked him off for revenge. But how did I fit into that picture? And if it was an old buddy, why wait all these years? Perhaps he'd just located Thomas, or maybe been released from a pen a couple days ago, went gunning for Thomas. But how would he—or she—know about me, about Kay? Of course Kay said they'd already interviewed people in Thomas's home town.... Sure, this joker had been hunting for Thomas for years, and the TV idea gives him his lead. Suppose he was tailing Kay and Thomas? That made hard sense. Unknowingly Kay had taken him to Thomas and to me; from that point it wouldn't take a genius to set me up for murder.

I felt much better, as if I'd accomplished something. But there was one loose end I had to tie. I said, “It was a horrible sight, Thomas' bald head split open, his rooms ransacked.”

Bobby didn't say a word, dried her eyes with her sleeve. Okay, I was clumsy, I didn't trip her. I stopped being cute. “When was the last time you saw Thomas?”

“I never saw him. I—” She looked up at me. “Are you crazy, Touie, first accusing Kay and now me?”

“Look, there's only four people knew I was hired to shadow Thomas: Kay, myself, B.H., and you.”

“Oh, for goodness' sake, I've been home all night. You know that—you called me early in the evening and again about an hour ago. It was after your second call I took the sleeping pills.”

That was good enough for me, even if it wasn't air tight. I couldn't see Bobby having the guts to kill. I waved my hands. “I have to consider all angles. Bobby, Kay said the TV show had a complete file on Thomas; did she ever tell you any of the details?”

“Vaguely, something about rape. I wasn't too interested in such sordid matters. She has some files in her desk; Kay often works here afternoons, and evenings.”

I followed her into the bedroom to an oval-shaped desk of ebony wood at one window. There was a typewriter on top of a small file cabinet next to the desk. She leafed through the cabinet, handed me a fairly thick folder with a neatly typed sticker TUTT-THOMAS pasted on it.

It was a good file, names, dates, interviews, and even a few pictures. I rolled it up, shoved it in my pocket. I felt almost happy; I could really work with this. It meant I'd have to get to his home town, Bingston, Ohio, damn fast. That wasn't a bad idea either; it would be dangerous for me to hang around New York.

“I'm going now. Bobby, can I trust you? Are you going to phone the police as soon as I leave?”

“Certainly not.”

“My life is at stake, melodramatic as it may sound. I need time. Do you think you can convince Kay and the TV studio not to say anything about Thomas for a few days?”

“Kay will have to do whatever Central does, but if I know TV and their fear of adverse publicity, they won't make any fuss unless forced to. Toussaint, I'm terribly sorry you're involved in this. I truly don't believe you would kill a person.”

“Thanks.” We were walking toward the door.

“Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

I wanted to ask her for money but couldn't bring myself to do it. “Barbara, if this gets messy, I mean, if I'm caught, our story is I dropped up here to shoot the breeze, stole this file while you were in the John. That will leave you in the clear. One thing you can do, find Kay and tell her to keep quiet.” I added a cover-up: “I'll be hanging around the city, hiding out, so tell Kay not to make any effort to contact me.”

At the door she squeezed my hand and began weeping again as she said, “Good luck, Toussaint. May God be with you.”

I was jittery riding down the elevator, looking up and down the empty street. Then I suddenly laughed and walked boldly over to Third Avenue, waited for a bus. I was fairly safe. The police would be looking for a Negro— but to whites we all look alike, and that was my protection. Except for my size, which fitted the usual “burly” Negro type the papers blame for anything and everything, I wasn't in much danger. Although by this time the cop would have given them a description of my clothes.

On the ride uptown I read through the file carefully, making notes of what sounded important. I decided I couldn't risk going home. I only had thirty-eight dollars on me. I needed money, but I doubted if Ollie would still have the rent dough around I'd left for him. I got off at 149th Street, walked toward the Drive.

I had to ring Sybil's bell four times before she came to the door in a sheer nightgown, asked, “Are you off your head, Touie? It's almost— Why it is three in the morning! I told you I had to be up early....”

“Honey, I'm in a rough jam. I can't tell you about it—it's best you don't know. But I have to leave for Chicago at once and I need money.”

“A jam? With that Madison Avenue woman?”

“Honey, don't ask questions. And it hasn't anything to do with her. Sybil, I have to grab a plane at once. How much can you lend me?”

She shook herself awake. “I still have the eighty-five dollars you gave me.”

“Any more?”

She went to a drawer and took out her purse; a sleepy, flatfooted walk. “I knew it was too good getting that money from you. Here, I have seven, eight—nine dollars more. That makes ninety-four dollars. When am I going to get this back?”

“Soon. Now, honey, if the police come here and—” Her eyes came wide awake as she cut in with “Police? Touie, what kind of trouble are you in?”

“Don't ask. And for everybody's sake don't say anything about this, talk around. But if the cops do question you, tell them the truth. I borrowed some money and I'm on my way to Chicago and Canada. Now I have to rush. 'Bye, baby.”

“But...? That's ninety-four dollars you owe me, Touie Moore.”

“Don't worry about it.” I blew her a kiss and walked up to where I'd parked the Jag. I drove across the George Washington Bridge, half expecting a road block. I got both tanks full of gas, oil, water, and a bunch of road maps at the first gas station open. I knew it would be easy to spot my Jag, something the attendant would remember. But there wasn't anything I could do about it, except steal a car, or steal different license plates.

But I didn't know how to steal a car. Taking license plates off a parked car would be simple—but it could mean more trouble; if I was stopped for going through a light or anything and had to show my license, I'd be cooked. The best thing was to keep to the Jag. If I got any sort of break, the police wouldn't know Thomas' identity for a day, and wouldn't know about me for a couple of days. By that time I'd be dead bum if I didn't come up with at least a sure lead. Hell, my money would only last about a week.

At 4:20 a.m. I started cutting across New Jersey toward Pennsylvania and Ohio. I drove carefully, not too fast, and the Jaguar ate up the road in the quiet darkness as I wondered how much longer I'd be able to drive it—or any car. I kept the radio on but the killing didn't make the news. Most of the time I felt confident, although now and then I had this doubt that I wasn't being a detective, I was merely on the run.

In the middle of the morning I stopped again for gas, then turned into a deserted side road and walked around to relax my cramped legs. It was a cold, sunny day, and it felt good to walk on the grass and dirt, fill my lungs with the clean air.

I drove till noon, when I stopped at a small roadside restaurant. There were several trucks parked outside, so I figured the food would be okay. A moon-faced woman with wild white hair was behind the counter, serving the truckers. As I sat on a stool this biddy shrieked, “No you don't! I don't serve no coloured here. Don't you see the sign?” She pointed a fat finger at a fly-specked WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE... sign.

I was in Pennsylvania and I told her, “That sign is so much cardboard. There's a state civil-rights law here.” I wasn't sure if there was or not, and was too tired and rattled to think straight.

“I go by a higher law—God. If God had meant you to be white he would have made us all the same. Now get!”

One of the truck jockeys snickered and I wanted to hit him so badly I thought I'd explode. But a rumble was the very last thing I could chance now. I stood up and told the old bitch, “You sure fooled me. I thought this was a 'coloured' place. I mean, seeing you, your face and the hard hair—bet you got as much 'coloured' blood in you as I have. That's why I sat down, seeing you.”

I walked out hearing her scream, ashamed of myself for such childish stupidity. Still, I had to hit back, some way. One thing was for sure, as the song says, when you leave Manhattan you're not going anyplace.

As I turned the Jag back toward the road, one of the truckers came out—not the one who'd snickered—said, “Wait a minute, Mac.” He walked over to the Jag and I got out fast, knowing I couldn't control myself any longer. He was a little guy, compactly built, freckles on his pale face. He had a Thermos under his arm and held it out as he said, “Old Ma hasn't all her buttons. You want some hot Java, I have a Thermosful you're welcome to.”

“Thanks a lot. But I'll get a regular meal some other place. But thanks again.”

“Suit yourself. Guess you must be a musician, huh?”

“Yeah. On my way to a job now,” I said, sliding back behind the wheel, waving as I drove off.

I stopped in the next town at a grocery, bought a loaf of bread, cheese, and a bottle of milk—ate in the car from then on. White people are nuts but I'd be even crazier if I got into a fight about it—now.

6

WE WERE driving along country dirt roads, but carefully. A low-slung Jaguar wasn't made for such roads. I'd about talked myself out, was waiting for her to say something. Her silence made me nervous. When we turned into a paved road Frances asked, “Can I take the wheel? I've never driven a foreign car.”

I stopped and we changed places. She drove with cool skill and after a moment said, “What can I do to help you, Touie?”

“The first thing is to understand what you're getting into. I'm wanted, so helping me makes you an accessory to a crime, or whatever the exact legal term is.”

“Don't worry about that. All I know is you're a musician and I'm showing you the town.”

“It won't be that simple once they start grilling you.”

“You talk as if you expect to be caught, Touie.”

I spread my palm on my knee. “I did some thinking on the drive here. No point in kidding myself. The New York City police are good, big time. For all I know they've identified me already, have 'wanted' flyers on me in the mails. Honey, I want your help, I need it badly, but at the same time I don't want you in over your head.”

“I want to help you. As for the rest—you can't cross a bridge until you reach it.” She turned off into a bumpy dirt road.

“Go slow; a rock can rip the transmission.”

She drove another few hundred feet and stopped. “What do we do first?”

“Answer a few questions. Has May Russell left town recently?”

“Not that I've heard.”

“Would you hear?”

“Yes and no. Actually I haven't seen May for weeks, but in a small town, taking a trip is over-the-fence news. I'd have heard if May left town.”

That didn't mean a thing. She could have flown to New York and back in less than an afternoon. “How about her... eh... clients? Have any of them left Bingston recently?”

She grinned. Her mouth was small and the heavy lips seemed to be pouting. “If you believe rumors, every white man in town is a 'client' of May's. I haven't heard of anybody leaving Bingston in months. Tomorrow I'll take you to somebody who can tell you everything you wish to know about May. And a lot about Porky Thomas. What else can we do now?”

I pulled out the TV data, held it near the dashboard light. “When Thomas was in school, he beaned a kid named Jim Harris with a rock, gave him a concussion. Where's Harris now?”

“In South America. He left Bingston years ago, went to college and came out an oil engineer. I know he's still down in South America. Pop saves stamps and takes them off Harris' letters to his folks here.”

“Now, in '48 Thomas did a couple of months with a Jack Fulton for petty theft. In '45, he and this same Fulton did a stretch at reform school. Do you know Fulton?”

Frances nodded. “He died in Korea. His name is on the bronze tablet next to the school flagpole. What else?”