The Paul Cain Omnibus

555

The cab swerved crazily to the curb, stopped. The driver jumped out and crossed the sidewalk in three steps, swept into the little cigar store like a great chocolate-colored cyclone.

The squat Negro behind the counter regarded him sleepily. “Whassa mattah wif you, Lonny?” he drawled. “You got ants?” Lonny was tall, raw-boned. His eyes were shiny with excitement, his dark, good-natured face split to a wide grin.

“Ants Ah got,” he chanted, “ol’ lucky ants!” He leaned across the counter, went on in a hoarse stage whisper, “Willie, Ah jus’ had the sweetes’ dream. They was three bears runnin’ aroun’ in a circle, an’ suddenly they stopped an’ got in line an’ looked at me — an’ they all had big white fives painted on theah foahheads! Then the bigges’ one said, “Get goin’, Lonny...”

He whipped five crumpled dollar bills out of his pocket and slapped them down on the counter, smoothed them carefully.

“An’ heah Ah is! Get them five skins down on five-five-five — an’ get all ready to pay off. Nothin’ can stop me today. Ah’m right!”

Willie Armstrong picked up the bills and dropped them into a drawer.

His store was one of the hundred or more Harlem branches of the Numbers Game where one could bet any amount from a penny to five dollars on a three-number combination determined by the odds posted on the first race at Aqueduct, and Willie was accustomed to black boys with “unbeatable” hunches. He scribbled three fives and $5.00 on a slip of paper, added a mystic hieroglyphic that meant okay and pushed it across the counter. Lonny picked it up, folded it devoutly and tucked it into his watch pocket. “Len’ me your pencil, Willie,” he said. “Ah want to figure out how rich Ah is.” Willie handed him the stub of pencil and he was lost for a minute or so in a maze of scribbled figures on the edge of a newspaper. “Hot dawg!” he finally gurgled. “Twenty-seven-fifty foah a nickel makes two thousan’ seven hunnerd an’ fifty smackers foah Lonny!” Willie bobbed his head up and down wearily. “’At’s right. All you gotta do is win.”

“Don’ worry about me winnin’.” Lonny emphasized his assurance with a long finger against Willie’s chest. “Ah know mah stuff... Ain’t this the fifth of the month?” Willie nodded. “Ain’t this nineteen thutty-five?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ain’t Ah layin’ five dollahs on the line?”

Willie’s woolly head jiggled up and down rhythmically.

Lonny drew himself up to his full height, boomed conclusively, “Man! Ah cain’t miss! Everythin’ is jus’ lousy wif fives!”

He waited a moment for that pronouncement to sink in, then strode majestically to the door, turned.

“Ah’ll be back aroun’ one,” he said, “wif a wheel-barra to cart away mah money.”

He grinned expansively and went out into the bright morning.

Morning business was unusually good; by twelve-thirty Lonny had made four trips, two of them “buck hauls” which in the language of cab drivers means a fare of a dollar or more.

Then, driving back up Amsterdam Avenue from downtown, he stopped for the traffic light at a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and just before the light changed, a beefy, red-faced man came out of the corner drugstore, hurried across and climbed into the cab.

Lonny turned with a wide smile. “Yas, suh. Wheah to?” This was his fifth fare of the day; that “Ol’ Lucky Five,” he reflected.

The man snapped, “Fifty-five East Hundred an’ Fiftieth — an’ make it fast!”

Lonny’s eyes goggled. His fifth haul, and the man wanted to go to...

The screech of horns and the man’s sharply repeated, “I said make it fast!” bumped Lonny out of his ajar-jawed amazement. The light had changed. He shifted swiftly and they rattled across the intersection, on up Amsterdam Avenue.

Lonny clicked down his meter flag in a daze; he was far too lost in stunned contemplation of this supernatural repetition of fives to notice that his passenger was scowling through the rear window, nervously fingering something that bulged under his left armpit.

After several blocks the man leaned forward suddenly. “Turn off right at the next corner,” he snapped.

Lonny was feverishly calculating the distance to the address on a Hundred and Fiftieth Street. He glanced at the meter; if he could only make it tick to fifty-five cents the cycle of fives would be complete. He nodded mechanically and turned left.

The man pounded on the glass, shouted, “Hey, you dumb mug! I said turn right!”

Lonny grinned apologetically over his shoulder, stepped on the brake. “Ah’m sorry, Mistah,” he mumbled. “Ah guess Ah didn’ heah you.”

He swung the cab around and headed east.

Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five cents; the meter ticked on and Lonny’s heart and hopes beat with it. They had turned north again on Lenox Avenue, were approaching a Hundred and Fiftieth. He realized with a sudden sinking twinge that the meter wouldn’t make it; it seemed to have curled up and died at thirty-five, then it clicked to forty and he sighed. It would never make it.

If he could only cross a Hundred and Fiftieth, act like he’d missed it, they’d have to go on for two blocks to reach the next east-bound street. That, according to his calculations, would just about make it. He set his jaw, stepped on the gas.

The man hammered on the glass, yelled: “Hey! You passed it!”

Lonny slowed down a little and turned an elaborately innocent mask to his practically apoplectic passenger.

“Gee! Ah guess Ah did, at that,” he said.

The man shoved the door open suddenly and stepped out on the running board, swung to the street. That was something Lonny hadn’t counted on; he jammed on the brakes, twisted in his seat to call plaintively:

“Ah’m sorry, Mistah, Ah plumb missed it. Get back in an’ Ah’ll get you theah in jig-time.”

But the man was crossing the street swiftly. He glanced back and his mouth moved viciously and a sound as of distant, angry waves came faintly to Lonny’s ears.

He wailed, “You foahgot to pay me,” but another cab — a very shiny and new one — had cut in between them and he disconsolately watched the man get into it and whirl away around the corner, east on a Hundred and Fiftieth.

He knew that shiny new cab. It belonged to Clint Waller, and more than the break in his chain of fives, more than the loss of his fare, that weighed like a bitter leaden pill in Lonny’s insides. Clint Waller had crossed his path before, unpleasantly. There was the matter of an argument over a crap game after which Lonny had come to in the hospital with a slashed cheek, and there was the matter of a certain high-yellow gal...

He savagely jerked the gear lever into reverse, backed into an alley, spun around the corner. He was too intent on catching up with Clint Waller to notice the dark green sedan that had followed from a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, stopped half a block back on Lenox while its occupants narrowly watched his passenger change cabs, then followed swiftly east.

He roared across a Hundred and Fiftieth, darting miraculously in and out of traffic, gaining rapidly. He came abreast of the green sedan. Then he saw Clint’s cab pull up and stop in front of Fifty-five, the red-faced man get out; he shoved the throttle to the floor. The sedan cut in swiftly, slowed, and as it passed there was sudden thunder, and orange flame spouting from its side; the red-faced man sank down to his knees and fell forward, smashed his face against the running board.

Lonny kicked the brake, tires shrieked as the cab shuddered to an abrupt stop.

He saw Waller start to get out, then stop and put his two hands up to his chest, slide slowly sideways and crash to the floor. He saw a knot of people gather, grow magically like bees clustering about a lump of sugar. He sat, staring dumbly at the milling crowd, the skin of his forehead creased to thin dark bars of bewilderment; as if there was something he wanted terribly to understand, something maddeningly elusive.

Willie Armstrong’s cigar store was crowded; Willie was at the phone, the daily number was due. Lonny elbowed his way to the counter. Willie mumbled into the transmitter, listened, hung up.

“Eight-three-six,” he said. He riffled the pages of a soiled paperbound book. “That’s Clint Wallah’s numbah — right on the haid. He had it foah fifteen cents; he win — let’s see — eighty-two fifty...”

Lonny raised his head slowly, bewilderment still clouded his eyes, twisted his smooth dark face. He was silent a moment, staring unseeingly at Armstrong, then he smacked his big fist down on the counter, boomed:

“Dawg gone! That Clint Wallah’s the luckiest son-of-a-gun Ah evah seen!”