South Street (18 page)

“Okay,” Frankie said. “Time was when you wouldn’t turn down a drink, but then you wasn’t drinkin’ beer then, either. Thanks for eatin’ with me.”

“My pleasure,” Brown said, pushing his chair back.

“Bull,” said Frankie. “You just like steak. G’wan, get outa here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Frankie watched as Brown went over and pinched Maria and then went out the door. He pulled a big white handkerchief from his rear trouser pocket, accompanying the action with a great deal of snorting. He replaced the handkerchief, struggled laboriously to his feet, and waddled back to the kitchen, to the glassed-in space he used for an office. Easing himself into an ancient wooden chair, he picked up the telephone and dialed. While the phone buzzed in his ear he reached out and shoved the door closed. The little room was stifling, and he pulled his handkerchief out again and wiped his face. “Hello,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, it’s me. Who the hell was you expectin’? An’ where you been all goddamn day, I been tryin’ to get … Yeah, well I ain’t payin’ you to shack up. You can shack up when the job’s done.” The telephone squawked indignantly. “All right, all right, how’d it go? … Fine. It ain’t gonna make the papers, is it? … All right, you can come in tomorrow afternoon an’ get the other half.” Frankie hung the phone up gently and smiled contentedly. He reached out and opened the door to let in some air. He sniffed the odor of simmering seasoned tomatoes, smiled, folded his hands across his ample stomach, and closed his eyes. In a few minutes he was snoring softly and gently, in the sonorous tones of a man whose scores are settled and whose soul is at peace with God and the world.

Big Betsy rumbled into Lightnin’ Ed’s just as the Philadelphia pitcher tossed a perfect strike that would have entered the catcher’s mitt with a solid, satisfying meaty thump had it not first encountered the bat of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ lead-off man with a resounding, unforgiving crack and vanished from the big TV screen by way of the fence in the upper right-hand corner. “Shit,” muttered Leo, “everybody knows they’re gonna lose, but do they have to start in the first damn inning?” Big Betsy ignored both Leo and the TV—she hated baseball with a rare passion. It represented competition. Jowls joggling and her breasts bouncing, Big Betsy started down to the end of the bar to wait for Leo’s hurried attentions, but on her way she passed what she at first took to be a lampshade and then realized was a man, sitting at the bar. Big Betsy ground to a halt and rotated her head for a more detailed inspection. It was definitely male, and that made it a prospective customer, but if it was a John, it was about the weirdest John Big Betsy had ever seen. His eyes fixed on the TV screen, the weird John licked the back of his hand, sprinkled salt on it, took hold of the shot glass in front of him, grasped a wedge of lemon, licked the salt, bit the lemon, and swallowed the entire contents of the glass. Big Betsy blinked and shook her head. She waited until the next batter did whatever the next batter did, and then she leaned over the bar. “Hey, Leo,” whispered Big Betsy. Since Big Betsy’s whisper could have competed successfully with a fog horn, Leo came rushing over. Big Betsy moved on until she reached the far end of the bar, with Leo in hot pursuit.

“What is it?” demanded Leo when he caught up with her. “I don’t wanna miss none of the action.”

“Me neither,” said Big Betsy. “An’ that’s just what I wanna know—what is it?”

“What’s what?”

“That,” said Big Betsy, jerking her head.

“Oh,” said Leo. “Damn if I know. It just walked in off the street.”

“Lord!” exclaimed Big Betsy. “You mean they let it walk around loose?”

“Well,” said Leo, “I guess maybe if it was uptown they’d lock it up, but down here, who cares? Now I gotta get back to the game. You want a drink?”

“Nah,” said Big Betsy, shaking her head sadly, “it’s that time a the month.” Leo nodded understandingly and got her carton of milk out of the cooler. Big Betsy sighed: “I sure hope that check comes through a little early, ’cause I sure am sick a this white cow piss.”

“It’s good for your ulcer,” said Leo, pouring the milk.

Big Betsy grunted and looked down at the weird John. “He sure does like baseball,” she observed. The weird John was sitting tensely on his stool, eyes firmly on the screen, hands clasped as if he were praying.

“Oh yeah,” said Leo. “He’s a real nut. He give me his own damn pregame show, quoted me battin’ averages an’ ERAs like they was gospel.”

“Goddamn, Leo,” said Big Betsy, “what the hell is an ERA?”

“Ask him. He knows everythin’. I betcha he could tell you what color Richie Allen shits.”

“All I wanna know,” grumbled Big Betsy, “is when ma goddamn welfare check is comin’ in so’s I can quit ruinin’ ma insides with this … this …” Big Betsy waved both hands at the glass of milk in a gesture of total disgust.

But Leo wasn’t listening. He had eased himself into a position from which he could see the TV. Big Betsy watched for a while, frowning constantly and superimposing a grimace each time she took a sip of her milk. The half inning ended, and Leo turned to wait on the dozen or so customers who were crowded into the section of the bar directly in front of the TV set. Big Betsy glowered in frustration. Twelve men in the room and she couldn’t even promote a short Coke because they were all too busy watching some dumbass toss a ball of horseshit at another dumbass while another dumbass tried to hit it with a stick. Big Betsy watched, cursing. She was put out by the inattention of all of them, but she was particularly put out by the inattention of the weird John, who, according to Big Betsy’s indisputably professional opinion, should have been particularly susceptible to her charms, since he had never before been exposed to them. Forty-five years of experience had taught Big Betsy to respect the seductive powers of unfamiliarity, but this particular individual seemed immune. Big Betsy thought he might be a faggot, but Big Betsy had heard somewhere that faggots did not like sports. In fact, that’s how you could tell which little boys were going to grow up bent. Big Betsy glumly decided that she could not write off the weird John’s lack of interest to homosexual tendencies. Anger rose within her, increasing with every sip of milk she took. She thought hard. A light came into her eye.

“Haw, haw, haw,” laughed Big Betsy the whore, throwing her head back as far as it would go and straightening her back to accentuate her bosom. She peered around through partly closed eyes as the sound of her braying laughter echoed in the confined space of Lightnin’ Ed’s. But nobody came over to ask her what was so funny. Nobody looked interested. Nobody even looked mildly distracted, except Leo, who gave her an angry, silencing glare and then turned his attention back to the TV set. Big Betsy brought her head forward once again and allowed her back to slip into a relaxing slump. She sipped her milk, made a face, sighed. For long minutes she sat motionless, but then a light glimmered in her eye once again. She climbed off her bar stool and marched down to the knot of men before the TV. She eased in between them, making room for herself with dainty heaves of bosom and buttocks, until she was directly behind the weird John. She pressed her breasts firmly against his back. She felt him stiffen slightly. Smiling to herself, she increased the pressure and rocked gently from side to side. The weird John slowly raised his hands to the level of his shoulders and clenched his fists. Big Betsy grinned broadly and tried to choke the weird John from behind with pure mama pressure.

“GO!” screamed the weird John. Big Betsy beamed. She felt the warm glow of fulfillment burst like a small explosion somewhere in her belly, below the layers of girdle-encased fat. And then she suddenly realized that all the other men were shouting too. She looked at the weird John, discovered that his eyes had never left the TV screen, and glanced up in time to see the instant replay of a Philadelphia player climbing to his feet and dusting off his pants after sliding into third base with a triple. Big Betsy backed away in embarrassment, retreated hastily to the far end of the bar, mounted her stool, stared despondently at the wall. One fat tear of rage and frustration escaped from her eye and trailed down the side of her nose before vanishing into a gaping pore at the base of her left nostril. She sighed.

It was the first time in forty-five years that Big Betsy had confused an erection with a three-two pitch.

Willie T. was having a hate affair with everyone in the city named Brown, which, so Willie T. had discovered, was a considerable number of people to try to hate. That was precisely the reason that Willie T. hated them. There were so many Browns that Willie T. had no way of knowing which one of all the Browns he had discovered was the Brown he was looking for. He wasn’t even sure that while he was busy finding all the Browns he wasn’t looking for he had found the Brown he was looking for. Willie T. didn’t know if he had been totally unsuccessful or far too successful, but they both amounted to the same thing: he couldn’t give Leroy the Brown Leroy wanted, and Leroy was going to be unhappy, and when Leroy was unhappy everybody was unhappy, and when Leroy was unhappy with somebody in particular, that particular somebody became particularly unhappy. In the past such somebodies had been known to become so particularly unhappy that they had broken their own arms. Willie T. started getting unhappy.

He picked up the phone book, snorted, cursed, put the book down, picked up the phone, snorted, cursed, put the phone down, snorted, cursed, paced the length of the room, snorted, cursed, opened the door, went out to the bar and appropriated a full bottle of whiskey, snorted, cursed, returned to the office, bottle in one hand, shot glass in the other. He poured a shot, made a face, swallowed the’ whiskey, snorted, cursed and was reaching for the bottle again when somebody threw a bucketful of hot tar against the inside of his stomach. Willie T. gasped and sank down on the edge of the pool table. He felt marginally less unhappy. He regarded the bottle with a look of great respect.

Thirty minutes later, when Leroy made his entrance and sat down behind his desk, the bottle was one-third empty, and Willie T. was perched on the edge of the pool table, swaying gently and feeling far from unhappy. Leroy watched calmly as Willie T., no longer bothering with the glass, raised the bottle to the light, examined it, put it to his lips, took two large swallows, lowered the bottle, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well?” said Leroy.

Willie T. jiggled and joggled and managed to turn without falling. “Fine, thank you. And yourself?”

Leroy smiled a shark smile. “Now don’t you be playin’ Chinese tag with ma ass, nigger,” he said sweetly. The smile left his face and his lower lip protruded. “Didja find him?”

“Find who?” said Willie T. Leroy turned slightly darker. “Oh, yeah, I ’member now. Nah, man, I checked everywheres but there wasn’t no sign of the ecgheckt,” said Willie T. as Leroy reached across the desk, grasped him firmly by the throat, and elevated him two feet off the edge of the pool table.

“Don’t you sit on your ass while you tellin’ me what a muthafuckin’ jackass you is; you stand up an’ tell me.”

“Ecgheckt,” said Willie T. Leroy dropped him onto the pool table. Willie T. bounced quickly to his feet. “Jesus, boss …”

“Say it!” thundered Leroy. “Tell me what a muthafuckin’ jackass you is. An’ an idiot. I almost forgot the idiot.”

“Just because I can’t find one goddamn nigger in a whole goddamn city full a niggers don’t make me a goddamn idiot,” said Willie T. in a fit of drunken defiance. Willie T. was unaccustomed to neat whiskey.

Leroy smiled. “I done give up tryin’ to figure out what does make you an idiot.” He resumed his seat. “Well, maybe I didn’t give you enough time. You got till tomorrow.”

The whiskey had a dangerous effect on several portions of Willie T.’s anatomy. It had caused his brain to soften, his mouth to loosen, and his backbone to stiffen. “You can give till next Juvember,” he snapped. “There ain’t noplace left to look.”

“You looked in the bars?”

“That, fool, was the first place I looked.”

Leroy stared at him. “Whad you say?”

“I said the bars was the first place I looked.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Where else?”

“Where else?
Everywhere
else. I checked the hospitals, the phone company, the ’lectric company, the gas company, the welfare board, the Post Office, the churches, the runners, the pushers, the hookers, the pawnshops,
and
the goddamn po-lice, not to mention the Democratic party and the N double Ass CP. Honest to Jesus, Leroy, this nigger ain’t human. He don’t call nobody, he don’t get no mail, he don’t cook nothin’, he don’t pray for nothin’. He don’t buy nothin’, sell nothin’, play nothin’, snort nothin’, shoot nothin’, smoke nothin’, fuck nothin’ … I mean he don’t do
nothin
’.”

“He bothers me,” snapped Leroy, “an’ when I finds him I’m gonna kick shit outa him. An’ if you don’t find him pretty damn quick you gonna start botherin’ me. An’ I knows where you are to start with.”

Willie T. felt the warm embers the whiskey had left glowing in his gullet turn, one by one, into ashes. He started to sink down on the edge of the pool table, caught himself, and began to ease away from Leroy. “Get me some dinner,” Leroy commanded.

“Sure, boss, sure,” stammered Willie T., trying to remember how to walk, “uh, what brand?”

“The usual,” Leroy growled.

Willie T. nodded spastically and stumbled toward the door. Just as he got there it swung inward and caught him on the forehead. “Ugpumph,” said Willie T., rebounding into the center of the room, where he fetched up against the pool table and then collapsed onto the floor. Cotton, his inertia undiminished by the resistance of Willie T.’s mass, continued through the door. He closed it softly behind him.

“Hope I ain’t interruptin’ nothin’,” Cotton said.

“Nope,” Leroy replied, “nothin’ ’cept Willie T. fetchin’ me a drink. Willie, you black-assed fuck-up, get up an’ get me a goddamn drink.
If
you can find the bar. Then you get your tail on outa here. I want every bar on the street checked seven times tonight.”

“Umph,” said Willie T., twitching slightly.