Sneaky People: A Novel (16 page)

Since receiving Ballbacher’s sucker punch, Buddy had been instinctively on guard against another unprovoked, maniacal attack. Had Leo chosen to make one when in possession of the gun, he would of course have been helpless. Jack was another matter: a large man, but flabby and sissified; lumbering urgently but slowly, his hand clawed like a girl’s, he would go for the eyes.

Buddy grasped a heavy glass paperweight shaped like half an ostrich egg and prepared to let Jack have it with a roundhouse to the temple. His reaction was so quick and Jack’s advance so sluggish that there was even time to gloat:

“Come and get it, sucker.”

This and the raised paperweight put Jack on ice. He stopped and asked: “Are you O.K.?”

“You better believe it.”

Buddy knew instantly that he had mistaken Jack’s intentions. He however carried it off deftly. He lowered his hand and dropped the paperweight onto the desktop from a height of three inches. Hard upon the report, he said grinning, as if in farce: “Never know who might jump you these days.”

Jack peered anxiously at him. Buddy expatiated: “I oughtn’t joke about it though. Leo’s mom died yesterday and he has lost his marbles, I hope only temporary. He took my gun without permission and shot his parrot.”

“Maybe you should sit down again,” Jack said in concern.

Buddy said irritably: “I’m perfectly O.K., like I said. It’s Leo. His mother…” He went through it again, but this time added: “And he’s laid the old lady out on the living-room sofa, like she drifted off to sleep.”

Jack said: “I heard about his loss, poor devil. He’ll be all right. Leo’s got his two feet on the ground.” He proposed their going in together on the flowers.

Buddy looked slightly indignant. “The wife and I already sent ours.”

Jack shrugged. “It was only a thought.” He had another: “We’ve—
my
wife and I—have been wanting for some time to ask you and Mrs. Sandifer to come see us. Maybe tonight after we all come back from Leo’s you would stop in for coffee.”

Buddy looked at his watch. “We’re going over there pretty soon now.”

“Oh,” said Jack. “Well then, maybe another time soon.”

“Sure thing,” said Buddy.

When Jack left, Buddy went into the garage again. Clarence was polishing a dark-green ’38 Packard, the best car currently on the lot. He was buffing the hood with a mitt made of sheepskin and looking at his reflection in green.

“Hi,” Buddy said almost shyly. “Did you look in your coat lately?”

Clarence stopped polishing, removed the mitt, went to the corner, took his jacket from above the oil drum, and found the envelope in the pocket. He took out the currency and counted it, provoking anxiety in Buddy.

“It’s all there. Come here. I want you to get this straight.”

Clarence was in no hurry. Having finished his deliberate count, he replaced the money in the envelope and the envelope in the jacket.

“It’s tonight,” Buddy said. “I got it all worked out. I want you to listen.”

Clarence ambled back. He wore an exceptionally stupid expression, his mouth slack and the lid of his good eye three-quarters shut. He returned the mitt to his right hand and began again to rub the gleaming hood.

“Knock that off,” said Buddy. “Listen to this.” Clarence kept his sheepskin-covered hand on the hood, but stopped moving it in circles. “You go around the back of the house. There’s this outside door to the cellar. I’m gonna unlock it. Soon as you get in, there’s the stairs to the upstairs on your left. At the top of them there’s a door to the hall. Now, in the hall, first door on your right’s the bathroom. A few feet further along, only across on the left side, is the bedroom where she’ll be.”

He peered into Clarence’s wooden face. “I better make a map.” He trotted about the garage, looking for a piece of paper, but the place was neat as Leo’s kitchen. At last in the oil drum that served as a trash barrel he found a crumpled brown bag. He smoothed it out on the hood of the Packard, produced a pencil, and avoiding the grease spots on the paper, made a sketch of the ground floor of his residence.

“Here you go.” Buddy used the pencil as pointer. Clarence moved around to the other side of him so as to employ his good eye. Buddy indicated the murder route with a series of tiny arrows. “This room here is the boy’s.” He put the pencil point onto the square next to that which symbolized the master bedchamber. “He sleeps like a log.”

He realized the Negro smelled of perfume. No, make that sweet soap: Cashmere Bouquet, to be exact. Buddy’s nostrils were acute to scents. Laverne bathed with this very brand. Call it perverse, but Buddy was reassured by the identification, though reacting with superficial annoyance. He reared back and asked sharply: “Are you getting all of this?”

Clarence nodded.

Buddy left the map on the car and strutted to the back of the garage and its wall-mounted workbench. He soon found what he was looking for, and touched it with the point of his pencil. “Come here…. This here monkey wrench. Take it. Screw the jaws closed. Yeah, that’ll do it.”

Clarence swung the big Stillson at the end of his arm and looked appraisingly at Buddy.

“One good shot of that…” said Buddy. He shut his eyes and shook his head. He was no sadist. It would be over in an instant, she being asleep at the time. Back at the car he seized the map again and waited for Clarence to join him.

“Here, I’ll put in the location of the bed.” He drew a rectangle and flanked it with two tiny squares. “Night tables, see. She sleeps on the inside, away from the door, so this table is hers. It’ll have a lamp on it and maybe a glass of water and a few hairpins and whatnot. Don’t lean on it or something might fall off. Afterwards we’ll mess up the whole room.”

“We?” Clarence asked.

“Yeah,” said Buddy, and then, as if he were explaining it to himself: “It’s the only way to be sure. I been over and over it. If I was out, like at a meeting or something, how would I be sure she went to bed same as usual? And there ain’t no meetings of anything I belong to tonight, the Kiwanis or Masons or whatnot. If I was out in a bar with somebody, it’d look phony because I never go to bars with guys, and my goose would be cooked if I went with a woman, wouldn’t it?”

He looked pleadingly towards Clarence though not at him. “I got to be at the scene, and I certainly don’t relish it. I got to be in my pajamas, in that room, in bed or pretending I was in bed and asleep when he comes in and opens the dresser, and she wakes up and screams and he lets her have it with the wrench, and I wake up and struggle with him and get hurt bad enough to make it believable that he could get away.”

Clarence asked: “
You
gets hurt?”

Buddy winced. “I ain’t looking forward to it, but I think my left hand oughta get broke maybe. I need everything else that would be likely to be busted in a fight in the dark with a killer.” He would also mess up his hair and tear his pajamas, but before that he would open the dresser drawers and throw their contents to the floor, having already, when Naomi was asleep but before the intruder arrived, quietly extracted the items of burglarable value, a modest string of pearls, earrings, and his own gold cufflinks and stickpin, and flushed them down the toilet.

Budddy had used his time well while sitting alone and grimacing in the office. “But,” he concluded, uncomfortably eying the monkey wrench in Clarence’s brown fist, “I don’t want to get hit with that thing. I’ll close a drawer on my hand or something.”

He put the pencil again to the flattened paper bag. “Now, you got everything but the time. She generally goes to bed around eleven, give or take a quarter hour. Sometimes I go then. Sometimes I stay up a little while longer, make myself a cup of Postum or something. Tune in to
Moon River
, you know, try to relax because I don’t always sleep too good. She falls right off though, soon as she hits the pillow.

“Now, tonight I’m going to bed when she does. Before I do I’ll make sure that cellar door is unlocked. The door at the top of the stairs can’t be locked; there ain’t no key for it. I figure you show up at two sharp—you got a watch?”

Clarence shook his head in negation, then showed a questioning smile. What a moron he was. But all he had to do was follow Buddy’s precise orders.

“When I’m finished you go down the street to Ziegler’s and buy a dollar Ingersoll. We got to get the time straight because I’m laying there awake for one, two”—he counted on his fingers—“three hours.”

Clarence shifted the Stillson to his left hand and extended the right, palm upwards.

Buddy sneered. “For Christ sake…” But at last he shook a dollar loose in his pants pocket and surrendered it to the Negro. Clarence took it to his jacket, from which he removed the envelope. He put the bill with the others therein and returned the envelope to the interior pocket.

“All right,” Buddy said irritably. He looked at his wristwatch. “It’s twenty to five already…. Now, you show at two
A.M.
The police cruiser makes their rounds at midnight and then they go back to the station and stay till morning unless called out. What I mean is, you shouldn’t have no trouble being a colored person in a white neighborhood. Nobody’ll see you at that hour.”

Clarence’s good eye seemed to revolve. Buddy went through the route and the time schedule again. Then he squeezed the paper bag into a tight ball.

“This goes down the crapper. I’ll hear you tonight when you come into the hall. One more thing—you bring a flashlight.”

Clarence put his hand out again. Buddy cursed, but gave him an extra fifty cents.

Buddy had got almost all the way back to the office when he remembered the only thing he had left out, and it was a wow. He returned to Clarence.

“You know where I live?” But how would he? “Well shit,” Buddy said, “and you never asked. Two-two-two Sycamore. Two twenty-two Sy-ca-more, like the tree. Know how to find it?” He told him.

What he did not tell Clarence was where, when, and how he would give him the rest of the fee; nor did the ex-boxer ask for that information. From the beginning Buddy had intended to arm himself against the possibility that killing one white person would send the Negro into a sharklike frenzy for more of the same color of blood, an animal instinct that might overrule his greed for mere money.

Buddy therefore intended to keep the pistol at hand throughout the proceedings in the bedroom. It had also occurred to him that if subsequent to Naomi’s death he killed Clarence, he would not only save money but also insure a perfect alibi for himself.

W
HEN
R
ALPH RETURNED
to the store Bigelow denounced him for taking almost an hour to make three deliveries and showed no sympathy when informed of the theft of the bike.

“Should of locked it. A nigger’ll take anything that’s not nailed down. They come over here from the West Side and raid this neighborhood. Other night, one or more threw a brick through my cellar window.”

He failed to mention the money tied to it. Ralph took dull notice of this omission, but was not nearly as interested as he would have been were he not still under the spell of L. Lorraine, L. Linda, L.L.L. He was weirdly thrilled that his bike had been stolen outside her house, as if it were a sacrifice to love.

“Whatchoo gonna do now?” asked the grocer. He held another bag ready for delivery and poked it.

“Walk, I guess.”

Bigelow enlarged his piggy eyes. “If it took you that long on a bike, the milk’ll sour by time you walk.”

“Then,” Ralph said ebulliently, “I’ll run!” Bigelow frowned at this, and Ralph added: “Tomorrow I’ll borrow a bike.” He felt so good he could not bear to mention the breakage. He realized this was a failure of character, but he was indulging himself in his intimate memories of Laverne: she had no need of those items, having broken off with her boy friend. Going through the possible reasons for the rupture, Ralph could only conclude that, she being perfect, the man must be a louse.

“I dunno,” said Bigelow, shaking his heavy head. “I dunno if that would work out.” He punched the cash register, causing the bell to sound and the
NO SALE
sign to appear in the window. He clattered in the change drawer and brought out a half dollar, holding it between thumb and forefinger as if he were going to put it into his eye like a monocle. “Here,” he said to Ralph. “You never earned it, but if you got to save up for another bike…”

So he was sympathetic after all; Ralph kept changing his mind about the grocer.

“Oh, I can’t take that—it was my fault.” Then Ralph sensed all at once he was being fired. He politely asked Bigelow if his suspicion was correct.

The grocer rubbed his aproned belly against the counter. “That’s about the size of it, kid. I got to have a boy with a bike. Even if you was fast as Jesse Owens, how would it look? Like I was a cheapskate. The A and P undercuts me on prices, and Rumbauer’s, over on Maple, he’s got a panel truck and delivers as far as them snobs in Wydale Hills; he charges an arm and a leg of course. Me, I’m in between. I got to work my hump off or I’ll be on my uppers.” His big cheeks collapsed in dramatic compassion. “Anyway, you’re a little light for all the lifting I need around here.”

It occurred to Ralph’s logical mind that now no deliveries would be made for the rest of the afternoon, and he would have pointed that out to Bigelow did he not discern behind the grocer’s sad-hound mien an absolute conviction that for him the matter of style superseded the claim of practicality. He was familiar with that trait of character, having identified it first in his father and then, in a juvenile cast, in Horse Hauser.

However, Ralph was not depressed by the turn of events. What a glorious day: lost my bicycle, lost my job, found my love. His memory of Laverne was an undifferentiated glow, without details and even impersonal; he could not see her face because she invested him absolutely, in a cloud of gold.

“Well,” said he, “it’s been a pleasure working with you.” He seized Bigelow’s hand and shook it.

“Same here,” said the grocer, his eyebrows moving in wonderment. “Good luck to you, kid.”

Ralph marched to the meat department and said goodbye to his friend Red, who couldn’t shake because his hand was buried in the cavity of the fryer he was disemboweling.

“Made your million awready?” said Red when he heard the news. He peered sharply towards the front of the store and saw that Bigelow was occupied with a customer who had just entered. Red signaled with neck and shoulders for Ralph to come around behind the counter. When Ralph arrived at the butcher’s block, Red said in a low voice: “He catch you with your hand in the till?”

Ralph laughed gaily, but Red for once was not joking. He pulled out a fistful of chicken entrails and dropped them onto the block. “I saw Hauser help himself a couple times. I never said nothing. This is a free country, and it’s the old boy’s business, not mine. But if I caught that little piss-ant stealing any of my meat, which I got to account for, I’d chop his dinkum off with a cleaver.”

He pushed his white cap back with his left wrist. “Funny thing happened. I went down cellar first thing this morning to take a leak, and I found this brick, see, that somebody’d thrown through the window and there was money tied to it, cash, see? I never said nothing to the old boy about it, and he never mentioned it to me. Now, ain’t that funny?”

“I’ll be darn,” said Ralph.

“I’ll be goddam,” said Red. “So Hauser don’t show up today. I been thinking if there’s a connection.”

“Maybe his conscience bothered him,” said Ralph.

Red suddenly threw his freckled face towards the ceiling and laughed. “Fuck ’em all but six: save them for pallbearers.” He slapped the pallid cadaver of the chicken and said: “So long, Small Change. Be good, and if you can’t be good be careful.”

“So long, Red.”

On the walk home Ralph passed Horse’s house, and as he had anyway to tell him about losing the job, he went through the side yard with its maimed wheelbarrow, busted-handled spade, and the garden hose from which the black rubber had flaked extensively from the underlying fabric: if you turned on the faucet you saw a sprinkler system of many outlets, but only dust and weeds were there to be watered.

The Hausers’ back porch was screened in. Horse often slept out there in the warm season on a canvas Army cot between the washing machine and a couple dozen paint cans.

He called Horse’s name four times before the owner appeared.

“Hi, Asshole,” said Hauser, remaining behind the screendoor.

Three steps below, Ralph said: “You know what? Old Bigelow hired and fired me in one afternoon.”

“Shit fire and save matches,” said Horse. He threw the door open and reached the bottom step before its slack spring contracted and slammed it with the report against making which he had been warned. But his old man was still at work; the truck was gone.

“Somebody hooked my bike,” said Ralph.

“Well, fuck me.” Behind his crude exterior, Hauser was capable of a generous sympathy. When told of the connection between the theft and the discharge, he said: “You take my bike. Show up there tomorrow and he’ll hire you again, mark my words.”

“But he don’t want me anyhow. He was just looking for an excuse. He says I’m too light for the cellar work.”

Hauser puffed out his chest and said: “It’s true that takes muscle.” But he gave Ralph a compassionate look and added: “But you’re wiry, Sandifer, and can take care of yourself. A big hunk of flab like Bigelow ain’t got no right. He can’t barely climb them stairs, puffing like a switch engine.” He made a fist and punched an imaginary target. “Boy, I’d like to give him one in that belly sometime, be like hitting a zeppelin though: all air behind it.”

“Well, I got to go,” said Ralph. “I just wanted to let you know I appreciate everything.”

Hauser asked: “Hey, did Bigelow mention that brick?”

“Yeah, but not the money! Red did though.”

Hauser made a face. “Red? You know how much meat that Red takes home for himself? Listen, I could tell you. Red steals that old simp blind. Course, Bigelow is the biggest crook in town.”

“Who does he steal from?”

Hauser shouted: “Bigelow? The fucking public, that’s who. He puts rotten apples and potatoes at the bottom of the sack. He’ll sell you spoiled food that will kill you with ptomaine.”

Ralph realized that Horse was merely feeding his own spite, a favorite exercise, and even if it approximated the truth, which Ralph doubted on practical grounds, Hauser had but half a moral leg to stand on, having himself pilfered money.

“So long, Horse, and thanks again.” Ralph started away but was stopped by Hauser’s question.

“You reported it to the cops, I hope.”

“No, but I will.”

“They’ll never find it. They’re all nigger lovers.”

Ralph turned once more, but again he was halted.

“Too bad,” said Hauser, “you didn’t stay on the job long enough to meet that whore!” He chortled. “You would of creamed your jeans.”

Ralph had actually forgotten all about that subject. That Hauser referred to Laverne Linda Lorraine; that drunkenly they had been heading for her dear staircase on Saturday night; that his kind friend on the one hand was on the other a stinking, vile, obscene criminal whose filthy tongue should be ripped out—all this was clear.

But it could also be regarded as established truth that, except in movies and ancient narratives such as the series about Frank Merriwell, a normal modern individual did not commit violence in response to verbal attacks on a woman’s honor, especially those made in innocent ignorance by an imbecile who no doubt had been home all afternoon playing with himself while perusing the little eight-page fuckbook the edges of which could be seen protruding from his back pocket as he climbed the steps.

So said the voice of reason. All the same, Ralph felt like a leper. A lesser crime against L.L.L. could be rectified: he still owed her for the breakage. His fifty-cent wages belonged to her. He fished out the half dollar and warmed it in his hand as he started back on the route to 23-B Myrtle.

But he had not quite gained the next corner when his father’s Buick appeared, swerved into the gutter bordering the wrong side of the street, and came to an uneasy rest, its engine throbbing.

“Glad I caught you,” said Buddy, hooking an elbow over the windowsill. “Hop in.”

“I wasn’t heading home yet,” said Ralph.

“Ralph,” Buddy said softly, “when I tell you to do something, there’s always a point to it.”

His plan in ruins, Ralph took refuge in a military sort of discipline. He marched around the car and got in.

“What happened,” Buddy explained once the order had been obeyed, “is Leo’s dear mom passed away.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“The proper sentiment, son.” Buddy put the car in motion and reached the right lane on a leisurely diagonal. “Now your mother and I are going to the laying-out. I think it’s your place to come along.”

Ralph returned to the style of his preadolescence: a writhing of features and a childish moan.

“It’s not exactly fun for anybody,” said Buddy. “It’s an expression of respect. I believe you call Leo a friend. You owe him that much.”

His father had misinterpreted his reaction. Ralph stood ready to give his due to Leo, of course. Laverne L. L. had herself stated that responsibility was paramount in her book, her eyes the color of deep water, her hand like a lily.

“Take long?” he nevertheless asked.

“As long as necessary,” his father said. He frowned quickly at Ralph, then put his eyes back on the road. “You’re taking short cuts again and slurring when you talk. That doesn’t go over in the business world, where money might depend on you making yourself clear. Also in this instance it’s pretty cynical, Ralph.”

“I didn’t mean it to be. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“I accept your apology,” Buddy said, and in compensation he gave an assurance: “I imagine fifteen-twenty minutes would wrap it up for you. You give your condolences to Leo, look at the cards on the flowers, and greet the other people courteously, and I’d say that was about it. You don’t have to spend much time looking at the body. Everybody will understand that in a young fellow.”

“Oh, that I don’t mind,” said Ralph, “if I don’t know the person. You’ve got nothing then to compare. I cut Leo’s grass a couple dozen times in two years, and I never once even saw his mother.”

“Neither did I,” said Buddy, and added piously: “But I understand she was a very fine lady.” Having reached a point opposite their house, he made a nonchalant U-turn which when completed brought the vehicle in to a perfect park: a demonstration of virile skill that was not lost on Ralph. When the time came he wanted to drive well, dominating the machine but with an almost lazy sense of ease. It thrilled him to think that if Laverne drove at all, she must by definition—soft golden container of grace—do it badly, beautiful intruder on a brute mechanism.

They entered the house to find his mother sitting in the nearest chair to the door, dressed like a Mystery Woman all in black including hat-with-veil.

“See you’re all set for the festivities,” said Buddy, lifting one side of his mouth as if to insert a pipe or cigar. “Give me five minutes to get into a dark suit.”

Ralph followed his dad down the hall, asking: “What do you think I should wear? The only dark suit I’ve got is for winter. I don’t even have a summer coat.”

Buddy turned in the doorway to the master bedroom. “Clean white shirt, Ralph. I can loan you a black tie. A clean pair of pants with a good crease. Black shoes if the pants are gray or any shade of blue; brown if the pants are brown or tan; and with a good shine in any event.”

Ralph entered his own room and inspected the clothing deposited on chairs, draped on doorknobs, and hung or heaped in the closet. The only pants that agreed with his father’s prescription were a pair of white ducks, in which, with black tie and white shirt, he would resemble a ballpark vendor of Eskimo Pies. He had no alternative but to remove the mothballs from the pockets of his winter suit, a dark-blue garment of weighty wool, and climb into its trousers in a temperature of some eighty degrees.