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‘Do you know what “strength in numbers” means?’

  I looked around for the bartender ’cause I didn’t know what the hell John was talking about and I didn’t know what to say.

  John put his hand around my arm. ‘I’m putting together a meeting. I’m hoping some of the busmen and the kitchen guys will make it. Do you think you can come?’

  ‘What we gonna meet for, huh?’

  ‘We’re going to talk about those changes I been telling you about. Together, we’re going to make a plan.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to no meeting. I want a day off, I’m just gonna go ask for it, eh?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ John put his face close to mine. ‘The workers are being exploited.’

  ‘I work and they pay me,’ I said with a shrug. ‘That’s all I know. Other than that? I don’t give a damn nothing.’ I pulled my arm away but I smiled when I did it. I didn’t want to join no group, but I wanted him to know we were still pals. ‘C’mon, John, let’s drink.’

  I needed that job. But I felt bad, turning him down about that meeting. You could see it meant something to him, whatever the hell he was talking about, and I liked him. He was the only American in the restaurant who treated me like we were both the same. You know, man to man.

  Well, he wasn’t the only American who made me feel like a man. There was this woman, name of Laura, a hostess who also made change from the bills. She bought her dresses too small and had hair bleached white, like Jean Harlow. She was about two years and ten pounds away from the end of her looks. Laura wasn’t pretty but her ass could bring tears to your eyes. Also, she had huge tits.

  I caught her giving me the eye the first night I worked there. By the third night she said something to me about my broad chest as I was walking by her. I nodded and smiled, but I kept walking ’cause I was carrying a heavy tray. When I looked back she gave me a wink. She was a real whore, that one. I knew right then I was gonna fuck her. At the end of the night I asked her if she would go to the pictures with me sometime. ‘I’m free tomorrow,’ she says. I acted like it was an honour and a big surprise.

  I worked every night, so we had to make it a matinee. We took the streetcar down to the Earle, on 13th Street, down below F. I wore my blue serge suit and high button shoes. I looked like I had a little bit of money, but we still got the fisheye, walking down the street. A blonde and a Greek with dark skin and a heavy black moustache. I couldn’t hide that I wasn’t too long off the boat.

  The Earle had a stage show before the picture. A guy named William Demarest and some dancers who Laura said were like the Rockettes. What the hell did I know, I was just looking at their legs. After the coming attractions and the short subject the picture came on: ‘Gold Diggers of 1933.’ The man dancers looked like cocksuckers to me. I liked Westerns better, but it was all right. Fifteen cents for each of us. It was cheaper than taking her to a saloon.

  Afterwards, we went to her place, an apartment in a rowhouse off H in Northeast. I used the bathroom and saw a Barnards Shaving Cream and other man things in there, but I didn’t ask her nothing about it when I came back out. I found her in the bedroom. She had poured us a couple of rye whiskies and drawn the curtains so it felt like the night. A radio played something she called ‘jug band’; it sounded like coloured music to me. She asked me, did I want to dance. I shrugged and tossed back all the rye in my glass and pulled her to me rough. We moved slow, even though the music was fast.

  ‘Bill?’ she said, looking up at me. She had painted her eyes with something and there was black mark next to one of them were the paint had come off.

  ‘Uh,’ I said.

  ‘What do they call you where you’re from?’

  ‘Vasili.’

  I kissed her warm lips. She bit mine and drew a little blood. I pushed myself against her to let her know what I had.

  ‘Why, Va-silly,’ she said. ‘You are like a horse, aren’t you?’

  I just kinda nodded and smiled. She stepped back and got out of her dress and her slip, and then undid her brassiere. She did it slow.

  ‘Ella,’ I said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Hurry it up,’ I said, with a little motion of my hand. Laura laughed.

  She pulled the bra off and her tits bounced. They were everything I thought they would be. She came to me and unbuckled my belt, pulling at it clumsy, and her breath was hot on my face. By then, God, I was ready.

  I sat her on the edge of the bed, put one of her legs up on my shoulder, and gave it to her. I heard a woman having a baby in the village once, and those were the same kinda sounds that Laura made. There was spit dripping out the side of her mouth as I slammed myself into her over and over again. I’m telling you, her bed took some plaster off the wall that day.

  After I blew my load into her I climbed off. I didn’t say nice things to her or nothing like that. She got what she wanted and so did I. Laura smoked a cigarette and watched me get dressed. The whole room smelled like pussy. She didn’t look so good to me no more. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and breathe fresh air.

  We didn’t see each other again outside of work. She only stayed at the restaurant a coupla more weeks, and then she disappeared. I guess the man who owned the shaving cream told her it was time to quit.

  For awhile there nothing happened and I just kept working hard. John didn’t mention no meetings again though he was just as nice as before. I slept late and bused the tables at night. Life wasn’t fun or bad. It was just ordinary. Then that bastard Wesley Schmidt came to work and everything changed.

  Schmidt was a tall young guy with a thin moustache, big in the shoulders, big hands. He kept his hair slicked back. His eyes were real blue, like water under ice. He had a row of big straight teeth. He smiled all the time, but the smile, it didn’t make you feel good.

  Schmidt got hired as a waiter, but he wasn’t any good at it. He got tangled up fast when the place got busy. He served food to the wrong tables all the time, and he spilled plenty of drinks. It didn’t seem like he’d ever done that kind of work before.

  No one liked him, but he was one of those guys, he didn’t know it, or maybe he knew and didn’t care. He laughed and told jokes and slapped the busmen on the back like we were his friends. He treated the kitchen guys like dogs when he was tangled up, raising his voice at them when the food didn’t come up as fast as he liked it. Then he tried to be nice to them later.

  One time he really screamed at Raymond, the head cook on the line, called him a ‘lazy shine’ on this night when the place was packed. When the dining room cleared up Schmidt walked back into the kitchen and told Raymond in a soft voice that he didn’t mean nothing by it, giving him that smile of his and patting his arm. Raymond just nodded real slow. Schmidt told me later, ‘That’s all you got to do, is scold ’em and then talk real sweet to ’em later. That’s how they learn. ’Cause they’re like children. Right, Bill?’ He meant coloureds, I guess. By the way he talked to me, real slow the way you would to a kid, I could tell he thought I was a coloured guy, too.

  At the end of the night the waiters always sat in the dining room and ate a stew or something that the kitchen had prepared. The busmen, we served it to the waiters. I was running dinner out to one of them and forgot something back in the kitchen. When I went back to get it, I saw Raymond, spitting into a plate of stew. The other coloured guys in the kitchen were standing in a circle around Raymond, watching him do it. They all looked over at me when I walked in. It was real quiet and I guess they were waiting to see what I was gonna do.

  ‘Who’s that for?’ I said. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Schmidt,’ said Raymond.

  I walked over to where they were. I brought up a bunch of stuff from deep down in my throat and spit real good into that plate. Raymond put a spoon in the stew and stirred it up.

  ‘I better take it out to him,’ I said, ‘before it gets cold.’

  ‘Don’t forget the garnish,’ said Raymond.

  He put a flower of parsley o
n the plate, turning it a little so it looked nice. I took the stew out and served it to Schmidt. I watched him take the first bite and nod his head like it was good. None of the coloured guys said nothing to me about it again.

  I got drunk with John Petersen in a saloon a coupla nights after and told him what I’d done. I thought he’d a get a good laugh out of it, but instead he got serious. He put his hand on my arm the way he did when he wanted me to listen.

  ‘Stay out of Schmidt’s way,’ said John.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, with a wave of my hand. ‘He gives me any trouble, I’m gonna punch him in the kisser.’ The beer was making me brave.

  ‘Just stay out of his way.’

  ‘I look afraid to you?’

  ‘I’m telling you, Schmidt is no waiter.’

  ‘I know it. He’s the worst goddamn waiter I ever seen. Maybe you ought to have one of those meetings of yours and see if you can get him thrown out.’

  ‘Don’t ever mention those meetings again, to anyone,’ said John, and he squeezed my arm tight. I tried to pull it away from him but he held his grip. ‘Bill, do you know what a Pinkerton man is?’

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Never mind. You just keep to yourself, and don’t talk about those meetings, hear?’

  I had to look away from his eyes. ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘Okay, friend.’ John let go of my arm. ‘Let’s have another beer.’

  A week later John Petersen didn’t show up for work. And a week after that the cops found him floating down river in the Potomac. I read about it in the Tribune. It was just a short notice, and it didn’t say nothing else.

  A cop in a suit came to the restaurant and asked us some questions. A couple of the waiters said that John probably had some bad hootch and fell into the drink. I didn’t know what to think. When it got around to the rest of the crew, everyone kinda got quiet, if you know what I mean. Even that bastard Wesley didn’t make no jokes. I guess we were all thinking about John in our own way. Me, I wanted to throw up. I’m telling you, thinking about John in that river, it made me sick.

  John didn’t ever talk about no family and nobody knew nothing about a funeral. After a few days, it seemed like everybody in the restaurant forgot about him. But me, I couldn’t forget.

  One night I walked into Chinatown. It wasn’t far from my new place. There was this kid from St Mary’s, Billy Nicodemus, whose father worked at the city morgue. Nicodemus wasn’t no doctor or nothing, he washed off the slabs and cleaned the place, like that. He was known as a hard drinker, maybe because of what he saw every day, and maybe just because he liked the taste. I knew where he liked to drink.

  I found him in a non-name restaurant on the Hip-Sing side of Chinatown. He was in a booth by himself, drinking something from a teacup. I crossed the room, walking through the cigarette smoke, passing the whores and the skinny Chink gangsters in their too-big suits and the cops who were taking money from the Chinks to look the other way. I stood over Nicodemus and told him who I was. I told him I knew his kid, told him his kid was good. Nicodemus motioned for me to have a seat.

  A waiter brought me an empty cup. I poured myself some gin from the teapot on the table. We tapped cups and drank. Nicodemus had straight black hair wetted down and a big mole with hair coming out of it on one of his cheeks. He talked better than I did. We said some things that were about nothing and then I asked him some questions about John. The gin had loosened his tongue.

  ‘Yeah, I remember him,’ said Nicodemus, after thinking about it for a short while. He gave me the once-over and leaned forward. ‘This was your friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They found a bullet in the back of his head. A twenty-two.’

  I nodded and turned the teacup in small circles on the table. ‘The Tribune didn’t say nothing about that.’

  ‘The papers don’t always say. The police cover it up while they look for who did it. But that boy didn’t drown. He was murdered first, then dropped in the drink.’

  ‘You saw him?’ I said.

  Nicodemus shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  ‘What’d he look like?’

  ‘You really wanna know?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He was all grey and blown up, like a balloon. The gas does that to ’em, when they been in the water.’

  ‘What about his eyes?’

  ‘They were open. Pleading.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘His eyes. It was like they were sayin’ please.’

  I needed a drink. I had some gin.

  ‘You ever heard of a Pinkerton man?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Nicodemus. ‘A detective.’

  ‘Like the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘They go to work with other guys and pretend they’re one of them. They find out who’s stealing. Or they find out who’s trying to make trouble for the boss. Like the ones who want to make a strike.’

  ‘You mean, like if a guy wants to get the workers together and make things better?’

  ‘Yeah. Have meetings and all that. The guys who want to start a union. Pinkertons look for those guys.’

  We drank the rest of the gin. We talked about his kid. We talked about Schmeling and Baer, and the wrestling match that was coming up between Londos and George Zaharias at Griffith Stadium. I got up from my seat, shook Nicodemus’s hand, and thanked him for the conversation.

  ‘Efcharisto, patrioti.’

  ‘Yasou, Vasili.’

  I walked back to my place and had a beer I didn’t need. I was drunk and more confused than I had been before. I kept hearing John’s voice, the way he called me ‘friend’. I saw his eyes saying please. I kept thinking, I should have gone to his goddamn meeting, if that was gonna make him happy. I kept thinking I had let him down. While I was thinking, I sharpened the blade of my Italian switch knife on a stone.

  The next night, last night, I was serving Wesley Schmidt his dinner after we closed. He was sitting by himself like he always did. I dropped the plate down in front of him.

  ‘You got a minute to talk?’ I said.

  ‘Go ahead and talk,’ he said, putting the spoon to his stew and stirring it around.

  ‘I wanna be a Pinkerton man,’ I said.

  Schmidt stopped stirring his stew and looked up my way. He smiled, showing me his white teeth. Still, his eyes were cold.

  ‘That’s nice. But why are you telling me this?’

  ‘I wanna be a Pinkerton, just like you.’

  Schmidt pushed his stew plate away from him and looked around the dining room to make sure no one could hear us. He studied my face. I guess I was sweating. Hell, I know I was. I could feel it dripping on my back.

  ‘You look upset,’ said Schmidt, his voice real soft, like music. ‘You look like you could use a friend.’

  ‘I just wanna talk.’

  ‘Okay. You feel like having a beer, something like that?’

  ‘Sure, I could use a beer.’

  ‘I finish eating, I’ll go down and get my car. I’ll meet you in the alley out back. Don’t tell anyone, hear, because then they might want to come along. And we wouldn’t have the chance to talk.’

  ‘I’m not gonna tell no one. We just drive around, eh? I’m too dirty to go to a saloon.’

  ‘That’s swell,’ said Schmidt. ‘We’ll just drive around.’

  I went out to the alley were Schmidt was parked. Nobody saw me get into his car. It was a blue, ’31 Dodge coupe with wire wheels, a rumble seat and a trunk rack. A five hundred dollar car if it was dime.

  ‘Pretty,’ I said, as I got in beside him. There were hand-tailored slipcovers on the seats.

  ‘I like nice things,’ said Schmidt.

  He was wearing his suit jacket, and it had to be eighty degrees. I could see a lump under the jacket. I figured, the bastard is carrying a gun.

  We drove up to Colvin’s, on 14th Street. Schmidt went in and returned with a bag of loose bottles of beer. There must have be
en a half dozen Schlitz’s in the bag. Him making waiter’s pay, and the fancy car and the high-priced beer.

  He opened a coupla beers and handed me one. The bottle was ice cold. Hot as the night was, the beer tasted good.

  We drove around for a while. We went down to Hanes Point. Schmidt parked the Dodge facing the Washington Channel. Across the channel, the lights from the fish vendors on Maine Avenue threw colour on the water. We drank another beer. He gave me one of his tailor-mades and we had a coupla smokes. He talked about the Senators and the Yankees, and how Baer had taken Schmeling out with a right in the tenth. Schmidt didn’t want to talk about nothing serious yet. He was waiting for the beer to work on me, I knew.

  ‘Goddamn heat,’ I said. ‘Let’s drive around some, get some air moving.’

  Schmidt started the coupe. ‘Where to?’

  ‘I’m gonna show you a whorehouse. Best secret in town.’

  Schmidt looked me over and laughed. The way you laugh at a clown.

  I gave Schmidt some directions. We drove some, away from the park and the monuments to where people lived. We went through a little tunnel and crossed into Southwest. Most of the streetlamps were broke here. The rowhouses were shabby, and you could see shacks in the alleys and clothes hanging on lines outside the shacks. It was late, long time past midnight. There weren’t many people out. The ones that were out were coloureds. We were in a place called Bloodfield.

  ‘Pull over there,’ I said, pointing to a spot along the kerb where there wasn’t no light. ‘I wanna show you the place I’m talking about.’

  Schmidt did it and cut the engine. Across the street were some houses. All except one of them was dark. From the lighted one came fast music, like the coloured music Laura had played in her room. ‘There it is right there,’ I said, meaning the house with the light. I was lying through my teeth. I didn’t know who lived there and I sure didn’t know if that house had whores. I had never been down here before.

  Schmidt turned his head to look at the rowhouse. I slipped my switch knife out of my right pocket and laid it flat against my right leg.

  When he turned back to face me he wasn’t smiling no more. He had heard about Bloodfield and he knew he was in it. I think he was scared.