The Fugitive Pigeon

Chapter 5

The funny thing is, I knew I was dreaming, but I didn’t know what I was dreaming. That was the damnedest dream ever; to be dreaming, and know you’re dreaming, and know it’s a bad dream, a terrifying dream, and not to know what the hell the dream’s all about.

I guess that was the most frightening part of it. Terror of the unknown and all. I wanted so hard to know what I was dreaming about that I popped myself out of sleep like a cork out of a champagne bottle.

I was lying on a floor, in a swatch of sunlight.

This was wrong. My bedroom windows face north; I get an acute angle of sunlight, a narrow beam, only at the very peak of summer. Besides, in my bedroom I sleep in bed, not on the floor. This was very wrong.

The body wakes up first, and then the mind. I opened my eyes, and moved my arms, and remembered everything.

I sat bolt upright. My back twinged as though someone had just yanked my spine out. I said, “Ngahh,” and lay down again. Sleeping on the floor isn’t a good idea at the best of times.

I got up more slowly on the second try, and this time made it all the way to my feet. I stood there, bent forward a little bit, and surveyed the room.

There was still someone in the bed, but now it was Artie and he was alone. On every flat surface in the room — dresser, night tables, straight chairs — there were half-empty glasses. The closet door was open, and clothing was lying in a heap on the floor in front of it.

There was the smell of coffee in the air. I followed it from the bedroom, and at the kitchen-closet I found a sloe-eyed raven-tressed beauty in dungarees and black turtleneck sweater, scrambling eggs. She was barefoot, and very short, and she had that Chinese-French-Negro look that Jewish girls get when they go to the High School of Music and Art.

She was the first to speak. “You were asleep on the floor,” she said. Matter-of-fact, the way you’d comment on the weather.

“I guess I was,” I said. My back hurt, my hands were greasy-feeling, my mouth was furry, and I remembered perfectly why I wasn’t in my own safe apartment above the Rock Grill. I said, “Could I have some coffee?”

She pointed at the pot with a fork that dripped scrambled egg. “Help yourself. You’re hung over, huh?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t drink last night. What time is it?”

“Little after two.”

“In the afternoon?”

She looked at me. “Sure in the afternoon,” she said. She went back to stirring the eggs. “Must have been some party,” she said.

“You weren’t here?” I was opening cupboard doors, looking for a cup.

“They’re all in the sink,” she said. “No, I’m the morning-after girl.”

“Oh,” I said.

It was close quarters there, her at the stove and me at the sink. I picked a cup out of the pile of dishes in the sink, washed it as best I could, and poured coffee in it.

She said, “I never saw you around before.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I don’t get up here very much.”

“Up here from where?”

“Canarsie,” I said.

She made a face like I’d just told a very corny joke. “Come on,” she said.

“No, it’s true.”

She already had a plate for herself. She scraped the eggs into it and put the pan back on the stove. “You want eggs, you got to make them yourself,” she said. Not being nasty about it, just letting me know.

“No, that’s all right,” I said. “Coffee’s enough for me.”

She carried her eggs and coffee over to the cluster of furniture in the middle of the room and sat down. Artie had no kitchen table. I followed her and sat down facing her and sipped at my coffee, which was still too hot to drink. She didn’t pay any attention to me, but just shoveled scrambled egg in the way you might shovel coal into a furnace, just scoop, scoop, scoop. Like Patrolman Ziccatta and his nip, nip, nip. Steady, machinelike.

I said, “When do you figure Artie’ll get up?”

“When I’m done breakfast,” she said. “You don’t have to stick around.”

“Oh, but I do,” I said. “I have to talk to Artie.”

Now she did look at me. “What about?”

“A problem,” I told her. “A jam I’m in.”

“What’s Artie supposed to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, which was the truth. There just wasn’t anyone else I could think of to talk to.

“If it’s money,” she said, ‘he’s broke. Believe me.”

“It isn’t money,” I told her. “I need his advice is all.”

She looked at me over the vanishing eggs and went scoop, scoop, scoop. Then she paused a second and said, “What is it, you need an abortionist?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Nothing like that.”

She said, “If it isn’t money and it isn’t sex, then I don’t know. You aren’t a junky, are you?”

“Me? No, not me.” The idea was surprising as the idea that two professional killers might have been sent out to practice their profession on me. Me a junky? Me a threat to the organization?

“I didn’t think so,” she said. “You look too healthy.” It was a comment that could almost have been an insult, delivered matter-of-fact between mouthfuls of scrambled egg.

‘It’s just some trouble I’ve got,” I said. I drank some of the coffee, and walked around the room a little. I’d slept in all my clothes, and I had that swollen puffy moist feeling you get when you’ve slept in all your clothes. I felt as though I’d just slept my way through a cross-country bus ride. “I’m sorry if I’m being mysterious,” I said. “But I don’t think I ought to talk about it too much.”

She shrugged, finished the eggs, and got to her feet. “I don’t care,” she said.

As she went over to dump the plate in the sink, I remembered something I could tell her. “My name’s Charlie,” I told her. “Charlie Poole.”

“Hi,” she said, standing at the sink, her back to me. She didn’t offer me her name. “You want to wake Artie now?” she asked me.

“Is it okay?”

“If you don’t,” she said, “I do.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Don’t take too long,” she said.

“Okay.”

I went back into the bedroom, carrying the coffee cup, still half full. Artie was lying on his stomach, arms and legs spread out in a pale twisted swastika. He looked like he was sleeping five miles down.

I said, “Artie? Hey, Artie.”

Surprise. He opened his eyes right away, flipped over on his back, sat up, looked at me, and said, “Chloe?”

“No,” I said. “Charlie. Charlie Poole.”

He blinked, and then flashed a great big smile and said, “Charlie baby! Nice to see you, long time no see, baby!”

“I came in last night,” I reminded him. I wasn’t entirely convinced he was awake.

He kept smiling the big smile, looking at me with bright eyes. “Great party!” he said. “What a great party!” Then he blinked again, and the smile slipped, and he looked at the floor. “You slept on the floor,” he said, the way he might have said, “You walked on the water.” Incredulity, but muted by awe. He said it twice, the same way both times. “You slept on the floor. You slept on the floor.”

“Artie,” I said, because I figured now he really was awake, “I’m in a kind of a jam. I need help, Artie.”

He looked up from the floor, and his smile this time was puzzled, his eyes sort of glassy. “Charlie Poole,” he mused. “Little Charlie Poole. Slept on the floor. Got himself in a jam. Little Charlie Poole.”

“I need help,” I repeated.

He spread his hands. “Tell me, baby,” he said, more quietly and sincerely than I’d ever heard him say anything. “Tell me all. Begin.”

Begin. Begin where? Two people were trying to kill me, that was part of it. The whole explanation about Uncle Al and the organization and the bar in Canarsie, that was part of it. Being out with little money and no coat, that was part of it. But where was the beginning of it?

Then I remembered the name I’d heard in the conversation between Uncle Al and the killers last night: Agricola. Agricola was the beginning of it, I supposed, the man who’d ordered the killers to kill me. So I said, “Artie, do you know of anybody named Agricola? In some kind of criminal organization or something.”

“Agricola? The Farmer? Hell, yes.”

“You do know him.”

“Farmer Agricola,” he said. “Everybody knows him. Knows of him, anyway. I never met him myself, of course, he’s too big. Besides, he stays out on his farm on Staten Island most of the time.”

“Staten Island,” I said.

“Sure. I knew about him back when I used to sell the pills, you know? He’s way up in the higher echelons there, maybe he runs the whole thing for all I know. Did you know I quit selling them things? I saw this documentary on television, the evils of narcotic addiction, and let me tell you, baby, it was like a revelation. You’re looking at a new Artie Dexter, a new man, believe it or don’t. I am now so loaded with social conscience you—”

“Agricola,” I said.

“If you’re thinking,” he said, “of making an extra kopek, peddle the pills like at that bar you run out there, take my advice and don’t do it. Some morning you’ll look at yourself in the mirror, you’ll say—”

“No,” I said, “that isn’t it. This guy Agricola sent—”

But then the door opened and the sloe-eyed raven-tressed beauty came in and said, “Time, gentlemen, please.”

Artie shouted, “Chloe!” He threw back the covers and spread out his arms. “Come to Papa!”

“I hope to Christ not,” she said.

Artie didn’t have any pajamas on at all. Feeling that old adolescent blush staining my cheeks like the Sherwin-Williams paint can had just been dumped on my head instead of the globe, I said, “Well, uh, Artie, uh, I’ll, uh, talk to you, uh, later on, uh...” Meanwhile backing up. I left the room by the other door, the one leading to the bathroom, because that way I didn’t have to get closer to Chloe, who was taking off her dungarees and ignoring the dickens out of me.

I felt much better when I had the closed bathroom door between us. I heard Artie shout, “Ah hah!” and then there was silence from in there.

As long as I was in the bathroom anyway, and nothing to do, I washed. I didn’t take any clothing off, because I would have had to put the same dirty clothing on again and I didn’t want to have to do that. I knew, for instance, that my shirt collar must be black by now, but it didn’t bother me as much as it would if I were actually to see it. So I simply washed my face and hands, brushed my teeth with toothpaste and my finger, gargled a little bit on general principles, and left the bathroom by the other door feeling somewhat better.

As I was going out to the living room, I heard the telephone ring. I looked around, but the phone was in the bedroom, and I heard Artie bellow, “Every time! Every goddam time!” The phone didn’t ring any more, so I guess he answered it.

I searched the living-room shelves, found in amid the record albums an old paperback of Charles Addams’ cartoons, and sat down with it to distract myself from thoughts of violence and mayhem.

Somehow, I think I picked the wrong book.

After a while Artie and Chloe came out, both dressed now, both looking bouncy and healthy. Artie rubbed his hands together briskly and said, “Now! Charlie boy, you wanted to talk.”

Chloe said, “Coffee?”

“Right,” said Artie. “A round of coffee. Coffee for me and my troops. Charlie?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Great,” said Artie. He clapped his hands together and came over and sat down in a chair facing me. “We begin,” he said.

“And,” said Chloe from the kitchen-closet, “you can tell your Uncle Al he’s got a rotten sense of timing.”

I said, “My Uncle Al?”

Artie frowned and said to Chloe, “That was supposed to be a surprise, schmo. He didn’t want us to tell him.”

“I forgot,” said Chloe. “Sorry.”

I said, “What is this?”

Artie said, “Let’s talk. You had a problem, you wanted to talk. Something about Farmer Agricola, right?”

“No, wait,” I said. “This is important. What about my Uncle Al?”

Chloe said, “Forget it, will you? I’m sorry I spoke up, I didn’t mean to ruin anything.”

“The bit’s blown,” Artie told her. “It don’t matter any more, idiot, you already opened your big mouth.” But the manner wasn’t as harsh as the words. It was as though he couldn’t really be mad at her right now.

She said, “So sue me,” and went back to making the coffee.

I said, “So tell me.”

“That was your Uncle Al on the phone,” Artie told me. “He wanted to know were you here, and I said yes did he want to talk to you, and he said no he’d come on down and pick you up but don’t tell you because he wanted it to be a surprise. So when he comes in, will you act surprised?”