Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

Before I could weaken and change my mind, I made an appointment with a hair stylist. Then I finished my drink, dragging it out as long as I could, and stood up.

And the phone rang.

I almost didn’t answer it; certain that it would get me nothing but a bad time. But few men are strong enough to ignore a ringing telephone and I am not one of them.

A booming, infectiously good-natured voice blasted into my ear.

“Mr. Rainstar, Britt? How the hell are you, kid?”

I said I was fine, and how the hell was he? He said he was just as fine as I was, laughing uproariously. And I found myself smiling in spite of myself.

“This is Pat Aloe, Britt. Patrick Xavier Aloe, if you’re going to be fussy.” Another roar of laughter. “Look, kid. I’d come out there, but I’m tied up tighter than a popcorn fart. So’s how about you dropping by my office in about an hour? Well, two hours, then.”

“But — well, why?” I said. “Why do you want to see me, Mr. — uh, Pat?”

“Because I owe you, Britt, baby. Want to make it up to you for those pissants at Amicable. Don’t know what’s the matter with the stupid bastards, anyway.”

“But... Amicable?” I hesitated. “You have something to do with them?”

A final roar of laughter. Apparently, I had said something hilariously funny. Then, good humor flooding me. but I also wanted to see him, even though I didn’t his voice, he declared that he not only wanted to see know it yet. Thus, the vote for seeing each other was unanimous by his account.

“So how about it, Britt, baby? See you in a couple of hours, okay?”

“Who am I to buck a majority vote?” I said. “I’ll see you, Pat, uh, baby.”

I got out of the cab at a downtown office building. I entered its travertine marble lobby and studied the large office directory affixed to one wall. It was glassed in, a long oblong of white plastic lettering against a black felt background. The top line read:

Beneath it, in substantially smaller letters, were the names of sixteen companies, including that of Amicable Finance. The final listing, in small red letters, read:

P.X. Aloe

M. Francesca Aloe

’Allo, Aloe, I thought, stepping into the elevator. Patrick Xavier, M. Francesa, and Britt, baby, makes three. Or something. But whereof and why, for god’s sake?

I punched the button marked P.H., and was zoomed forty floors upward to the Penthouse floor. As I debarked into its richly furnished reception area, a muscular young man with gleaming black hair stepped in front of me. He looked sharply into my face, then smiled and stepped back.

“How are you, Mr. Rainstar? Nice day.”

“How are you?” I said, for I am nothing if not polite. “A nice day so far, at least.”

A truly beautiful, beautifully-dressed woman came forward, and urgently squeezed my hand.

“Such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rainstar! Do come with me, please.”

I followed her across a hundred feet or so of carpet (a foot deep or so) to an unmarked door. She started to knock, then jerked her hand back. Turned to me still smiling, but rather whitishly.

“If you’ll wait just a moment, please...”

She started to shoo me away, then froze at the sound from within the room. A sound that could only be made by a palm swung against a face. Swung hard, again, again... Like the stuttering, staccato crackling of an automatic rifle.

It went on for all of a minute, a very long time to get slapped. Abruptly, as though a gag had been removed, a woman screamed.

“N-no! D-don’t, please! I’ll never do—!”

The scream ended with the suddenness of its beginning. The slapping also. The beautiful, beautifully dressed young woman waited about ten seconds. (I counted them off silently.) Then she knocked on the door and ushered me inside.

“Miss Manuela Aloe,” she said. “Mr. Britton Rainstar.”

A young woman came toward me smiling; rubbing her hand, her right hand, against her dress before extending it to me. “Thank you, Sydney,” she said, dismissing the receptionist with a nod. “Mr. Rainstar, let’s just sit here on the lounge.”

We sat down on the long velour lounge. She crossed one leg over the other, rested an elbow on her knee, and looked at me smiling, her chin propped in the palm of her hand. I looked at her — the silver-blond hair, the startlingly black eyes and lashes, the flawlessly creamy complexion. I looked and found it impossible to believe that such a delicious bonbon of a girl would do harm to anyone.

Couldn’t I have heard a recording? And if there had been another woman, where was she? The only door in the room was the one I had entered by, and no one had passed me on the way out.

“You look just like him,” Manuela was saying. “We-ell, almost just. You don’t have your hair in braids.”

I said, “What?” And then I said, “Oh,” for several questions in my mind had been answered. “You mean Chief Britton Rainstar,” I said. “The Remington portrait of him in the Metropolitan.”

She said no, she’d missed that one, darn it. “I was talking about the one in the Royal Museum by James MacNeill Whistler. But tell me. Isn’t Britton a kind of funny name for an Indian chief?”

“Hilarious,” I said. “I guess we got it from the nutty whites the Rainstars intermarried with, early and often. Now, if you want a real honest-to-Hannah, jumpin’-by-Jesus Indian name — well, how does George strike you?”

“George?” she laughed. “George?”

“George Creekmore. Inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, and publisher of the first newspaper west of the Mississippi.”

“And I guess that’ll teach me,” she smiled, coloring slightly. “But anyway, you certainly bear a strong resemblance to the Chief. Of course, I’d heard that all the Rainstar men did, but—”

“We’re hard to tell apart,” I agreed. “The only significant difference is in the pockets of later generations.”

“The pockets?”

“They’re empty,” I said, and tapped myself on the chest. “Meet Lo, the poor Indian.”

“Hi, Lo,” she said, laughing. And I said, “Hi,” and then we were silent for a time.

But it was not an uncomfortable silence. We smiled and looked at each other without self-consciousness, both of us liking what we saw. When she spoke it was to ask more questions about the Rainstar family; and while I didn’t mind talking about it, having little else to be proud of, there were things I wanted to know, too. So, after rambling on a while I got down to them.

“Like when and why the heck,” I said, “am I seeing P.X. Aloe?”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to see Uncle Pat today,” she said. “Some last-minute business came up. But there’s nothing sinister afoot” — she gave me a reassuring little pat on the arm. “Now, unless you’re in a hurry...”

“Well, I am due in Washington to address the cabinet,” I said. “I thought it was already addressed, but I guess someone left off the zone number.”

“You dear!” she laughed delightedly. “You absolute dear! Let’s go have some drinks and dinner, and talk and talk and talk...”

She got her hat and purse from a mahogany cabinet. The hat was a sailor with a turned-up brim, and she cocked it over one eye, giving me an impish look. Then she grinned and righted it, and the last faint traces of apprehension washed out of my mind.

Give another woman a vicious slapping? This darling, diminutive child? Rainstar, you are nuts!

We took the elevator down to PXA’s executive dining room, in a sub-basement of the building. A smiling maitre d’ with a large menu under his arm came out of the shadows and bowed to us graciously.