Room To Swing - Ed Lacy

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?”