Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

When we were in the Imperial again, Necessary stared at me and I saw that the chill was back in his eyes. “Okay,” he said, “you’re calling it. Now what?”

“We pay another social call.”

“On who?”

“On Nick the Nigger.”

“Yeah,” Necessary said softly and smiled a little. “Orcutt would have done that, too.”

Sergeant Krone parked the car on 47th Street, around the corner from 1738 Marshall. We were in the heart of the upper middle-class section of what everyone called Niggertown — even its residents — and it looked very much like its white counterpart across the tracks, except that the blacks’ lawns seemed to be a shade better tended, if that were possible. They also used more imagination when it came to trimming their shrubbery. I spotted a dog, a cat, and what must have been a giraffe that were all carved or trimmed out of thick, hedge-like plants.

Krone stayed with the car and the sports page as Necessary and I walked to the house at 1738 Marshall. It was a large gray brick rambler with a graveled roof and a picture window that boasted the inevitable decorator lamp with a scarlet shade and a yellow ceramic base. The house belonged to William Morze, a plump, sixtyish Negro with gray hair, a number of young girlfriends, and a fondness for yellow Cadillacs. He had two of them parked in his garage, a convertible and a sedan.

Morze, sometimes referred to as Saint Billy, ran the black section of Swankerton and had done so since the end of World War II. He distributed what little political patronage there was, operated his own charity, oversaw the flourishing numbers business, conducted a profitable loanshark operation more or less as a sideline, ran a thriving burial, life and auto insurance agency, and contributed steadily, if not heavily, to the Democratic party. It was Morze who opened the door to Necessary’s knock. There was a bell, but I’d never known Necessary to use one when he could pound on a door.

The black man wore a yellow silk dressing gown, maroon pajamas, and fur-lined leather slippers. His brown eyes flicked over Necessary and me and registered dislike, even contempt, before the big white smile split his face and he slipped into his Southern Darkie role. He did it well enough.

“Why, I do b’lieve it’s Chief Necessary and Mr. Dye,” Morze said, mushing it all up. “You gentlemen’s out early this fine mawnin.”

“We’re looking for Nick Jones,” Necessary said.

“Nick Jones,” Morze said thoughtfully, as if he might have known someone by that name a long time ago, but wasn’t quite sure. Then he gave us his brilliant smile again. It was also brilliantly meaningless. “Now I do b’lieve Mistah Jones is up and receivin. Come right on in.”

Nick the Nigger could have passed if he’d wanted to. In fact, he had at one time when, fresh from Jamaica, he had used his English accent and tall, lithe blond good looks to hustle rich widows along Miami Beach. They could be of the grass or sod variety, and they could be thirty or sixty; it didn’t matter to Nick as long as they could pay his stud fee which, some said, ran as high as a thousand a week.

Jones, a living embodiment of at least one American dream, saved his money and when he thought he had enough he deserted the glitter of Miami Beach for the squalor of Miami’s black ghetto. He shot his way into the rackets against competition as bitter and ruthless as could be found anywhere. He also invented his nickname, insisted that it be used, and if it wasn’t when his picture appeared in the Miami papers, which it did often enough, he’d call up the city desk and raise hell. I remember somebody once telling me that the Jamaican had even considered changing his name legally to Nick the Nigger Jones but, for one reason or other, never got around to it.

Jones waved at us lazily from the far end of Morze’s thirty-five-foot living room which could have been copied from a 1954 edition of House Beautiful. It was that kind of furniture and that kind of taste. He was sprawled on a green divan, dressed in a cream polo shirt, fawn slacks and brown loafers. He wore no socks.

“Help yourself to some coffee, Chief,” Jones said, not rising. “You look as if you could use it. You too, Dye.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I will.” I poured two cups from an electric percolator and handed one to Necessary who sipped it noisily. Nobody asked us to sit down so we stood in front of the picture window.

“How was Luccarella?” Necessary asked Jones.

“Luccarella,” Jones said softly and then said it again. “Pretty name, don’t you think?” He turned to Morze who sat slumped in a green easy chair that faced the large window. “Do we know a chap called Luccarella, Bill?”

Morze grinned and this time looked happy about it. “I b’lieves he was with the gentlemens who came callin earlier this mawnin,” he said, still talking mushmouth.

“Ah,” Jones said. “That Luccarella.” He was silent for a moment and then gazed directly at Necessary. “He’s quite insane, you know.”

“So I hear,” Necessary said and sipped some more coffee.

“He kept raving about some plane or other that was scheduled to leave at six-forty-five this morning or some such ghastly hour. He even seemed to think that I should be on it.”

“He thought a lot of people should be on it,” Necessary said. “Some of them agreed with him.”

“Really?” Jones said. “Who?”

“Puranelli’s on it,” Necessary said. “He’s a little busted up, but he’s on it. So are the Onealo brothers. Tex Turango caught it, too.”

Jones nodded thoughtfully. “I think,” he said after a moment, “that it may be far more interesting to learn who’s not on it.”

“Schoemeister,” Necessary said. “He’s not on it.”

Jones once again nodded his tanned face with its cap of tight golden curls. His eyes, I noticed, were dark brown with long thick lashes. He had a thin, straight nose and a broad mouth that smiled easily above a neat chin. Nick the Nigger was almost pretty.

As he picked up his cup and headed toward the percolator, I turned toward the window and saw them. There were two of them, two Ford Galaxie sedans, and they came much too fast down Marshall Street. I shoved Necessary hard and he went reeling away and crashed into a small table some fifteen feet from the window. Jones turned quickly, holding his cup in his left hand and the percolator in his right. I dived at him and the hot coffee spilled over my neck as we tumbled and twisted down behind the far end of the green divan. I could see Morze start to rise from the green easy chair that matched the divan. He was halfway out of it before the picture window shattered and one of the bullets slammed him back in the chair. It seemed to press him deep into its cushions. There was another burst from the submachine gun, or they could have had two of them, but the second burst hit nothing other than three framed prints of some Degas dancers who were dressed in pink and white.

I could hear one of the cars roaring off and I wondered how deep its rear wheels churned into Morze’s finickly kept lawn. I stared at Morze who leaned forward now, his mouth open as he tried to gasp big gulps of air. My peripheral vision saw the first one as it arched through the broken picture window. I tightened up quickly into a ball as the grenade’s explosion blasted through the living room. I didn’t see the second one; I had my eyes squeezed shut, but it sounded louder than the first and underneath me Jones screamed and jerked violently.

The grind and roar of the second car as it dug its wheels into Morze’s lawn was all I could hear for several moments after the second blast and I couldn’t hear that too well because I seemed to be partially deaf. Then there was nothing, only that godawful silence that I’d heard once, a long time before, if you can hear a silence, on Shanghai’s Nanking Road.