Warren Murphy - Bottom Line

Ruby ignored the surprised look of the bartender and the greetings of four bums sitting at the bar and

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walked toward the back and sat on the stool next to Flossie.

The fat woman turned to stare at her. Ruby Gonzalez smiled, that quick sudden smile that could melt people's hearts and turn stranger into life-long friend. "Hi, Flossie," she said. "Have a drink?" Ruby nodded toward the empty beer glass and took a five dollar bill from her jacket pocket where she kept saloon money. It invited trouble to open a purse and fish in a wallet for cash in places like this. Too many people watched and wondered.

Flossie nodded. "Sure," she said. "Roger," she called. "A drink for me and my friend." She turned back to Ruby. "Do I know you?" she asked thickly. "I don't think so 'cause I don't have too many friends of the black persuasion."

Her voice was slurred and she spoke slowly, as if trying to make sure that she said nothing wrong, nothing offensive, at least until the beer was bought and paid for.

"Sure," Ruby said. "I met you once with Zack." "Zack? Zack? Oh, yeah. Zack. No, you didn't. I never met you with Zack. Zack doesn't like Negroes."

"I know," Ruby said. "He and I, well, we were never friends but we worked together on a case once."

The bartender appeared. Ruby ordered two beers. Flossie was still shaking her head. "Never saw you," she said. "Woulda remembered. Remember everybody as skinny as I used to be."

"I'll tell you when it was," Ruby said. "It was one night, maybe three, four months ago. I bumped into Zack down near Seventh Street where he lives, and

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we rode up to Twenty-third Street on the subway, and he said he was going to see you and we walked over near your place, and he met you downstairs, and we just waved at each other. I think you were going to get something to eat."

"Not Zack," Flossie said. "Zack never buys a meal."

"Maybe you were buying," Ruby said.

"Probably," Flossie agreed. "Give a man everything, best years of your life and have to feed him too."

"How is Zack anyway?" Ruby said. "Seen him lately?"

"Don't want to talk about it," Flossie said.

"Oh? Why not? What's he gone and done now?"

Flossie screwed up her face in intense concentration as if she were trying to recollect not only what Zack had done but exactly who he was.

"Oh, yeah," she said finally. "He left. He just walks out one night and doesn't come back. Leaves me without nothing to drink or eat. Leaves me alone. Had to go out on the street again to get something to drink and eat."

"When was that?" asked Ruby. The beers came

and she hoisted her glass, clinked with Flossie's and

toasted her impending good luck. "When was that?"

Flossie drained half the glass at a sip. "I don't

know. Not too good on time."

"Two weeks ago?" Ruby said.

Flossie concentrated on the concept of weeks, then

nodded. "Something like that, maybe. Or a month. I

know a month. Thirty days has September, April,

November, and June. All the rest have thirty-six ex-

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cept leap year whicli ends too soon." She finished her beer. "Something like that."

Ruby signalled for another beer for Flossie as she took a small sip of hers. "Was he working on a big case?" "Zack? Zack never had a big case in his life," Flossie said. "Trying to be the big man. Sitting there in my apartment, writing his dumb letter, messing it up, throwing papers on my floor. Is that any way to act? I ask you. Any way to act? Throwing papers on my clean floor. Dumb letter. Trying to be big man." Her beer came and she concentrated on it. "What'd he do with the letter?" Ruby asked. Flossie shrugged, a small movement at the epicenter of her body that sent shock waves careening through the surrounding flesh for seconds after. Starting at her shoulders, the shrug shuddered downward until it reached the seat of the overburdened stool, and then the aftershocks caromed back up so that her shoulders, which started it all, shuddered again.

She drank her beer to calm the earthquake. "What'd he do with the letter?" Ruby repeated. "Who knows? Wrote it. Envelope. My stamp on it. My good stamp. Yeah. I mailed it." "To the President?"

"Thass right. To the President of the United States of Watchamacallit, himself. I mailed it. Me. Zack can't even mail nothing right, I gotta mail it." .

Ruby nodded. So much for the letter. Now the only question left was where was Zack Meadows.

Ruby drank with Flossie until the tavern closed, trying to get a clue on Meadows's whereabouts, but the big woman knew nothing.

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À -

Two barflies offered to walk them home but Flossie told them loudly that ladies like she and her friend Ruby did not have anything to do with lowerr class people like that.

They laughed.

Ruby told them to fuck off.

Flossie led the way toward the door.

Ruby was following her.

One of the men staggered off his stool and grabbed Ruby's left arm.

Her right hand darted into her big oversized pocket-book and brought out a .32 caliber snubnose revolver, which she inserted into the man's left nostril.

His eyes widened in shock and he let go of Ruby's arm. He staggered back to his stool.

Ruby nodded wordlessly and replaced the gun. She met Flossie outside on the sidewalk.

"Gone home now," Flossie said.

"I'll walk with you," Ruby said.

"Don't has to walk with me. 1 walks all time myself."

"That's all right," Ruby said. "I'll walk with you anyway."

"Didden get chancet to clean apartment," Flossie said.

"All right," Ruby said. "Let's walk."

"Yeah. Walk," Flossie said.

The tenement building was the equivalent, in real property, of Flossie herself. It hadn't been much to start with and had decayed steadily. The halls were dark and Ruby regarded herself as lucky because at • least she could not see the dirt.

Ruby went up the steps, placing her feet down delicately, ready to jump instantly if she should step

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'down on something that squealed or moved. Flossie didn't seem to mind. She stomped up the steps like a Wagnerian soprano marching to center stage to sing about a horse.

Ruby reflected that the worst slums she had ever seen in the United States weren't black people's slums, they were white people's slums. Maybe for a white person to get as poor as a black person required some" kind of extra efíort, some special skill, the kind that could go into making a slum an absolute unliveable hovel.

"Ain't much," Flossie grunted halfway up to the third floor. "But all I can afford right now."

"Zack ever help you with the rent?" Ruby asked. "He only helps racehorses with the rent. Bookies," Flossie said. She liked that so much she repeated it. "He only helps bookies with the rent."

Ruby had thought Zack Meadows's apartment was dirty, but compared with Flossie's, it looked like a Frank Lloyd Wright experiment in open, carefree living.

That the debris and clutter was neither new nor unusual, Flossie demonstrated by picking her way accurately through the piles of rubble, weaving her way to her bed, and collapsing on it in a landslide of moving flesh that rocked the bed.

"Good night, Flossie," Ruby said. "I'll see myself out."

The only answer was Flossie's raucous snoring. Ruby closed the door behind her and looked around the room. If Meadows had written his letter here, he would have done it at the kitchen table. Flossie had talked about his throwing papers on the floor. Ruby looked around under the table and against the wall,

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found three crumpled-up pieces of paper from a yellow legal-size pad.

She read them under the bare kitchen bulb. They represented Meadows's initial attempts to write his report to the President, before he had hit upon the unique literary device of attacking Italian jockeys and all policemen.