William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

“Is that true, Tremont?” Quinn asked as he climbed the steps.

Tremont made a sound in his throat.

“You can’t talk?” Quinn asked.

“Hurts.”

“What happened, you get hit by a car? Somebody beat on you?”

“No. .” he said slowly, “I got that new-ritis. . and some of the old-ritis. Pain goes with them ritises. Got the pain all over.”

Tremont’s facial muscles were out of control and Quinn remembered him that way months ago. An emergency room doctor diagnosed it as peripheral neuritis, from acute alcoholism, pain so severe that clothing became a punishment. Tremont stopped drinking and found day work but then the County took away the welfare check for Peanut because of Tremont’s link to Better Streets; and Mary began drinking toward the grave. Tremont told Quinn: “I saw her on the street once and she was kissin’ a friend of mine and I swore I ain’t never gonna talk to that man again.” Then Peanut ran off forever and Mary came home to bleed on the mattress, rising only to drink the dregs.

“Woman,” Tremont said to her, “you’re in the bed.”

“I know, Tremont.”

“You know what that means?”

“I know.”

Tremont kept sober for her wake and the long wait at the bus station for her relatives, who never came. He sat in the house until the caked blood and the odor of rotten food drove him out. He slept in the bus station until the weather changed, or so he told Claudia when he showed up at Better Streets for cookies. But they no longer did cookies.

“You look god-awful, Tremont,” Claudia told him.

“Could be,” he said. “I ain’t seen myself lately.”

“I’ll call somebody, get you into that rehab.”

“Sure,” he said. He walked out of the meeting and the next Claudia heard he was on the stoop.

Matt came up the steps. “Hey, Tremont,” he said. “It’s the Bishop. We’re taking you to the hospital.”

Tremont almost smiled. “Okay, Bish,” he said. “Got the ’ritis. Bottle of wine’d cut the pain. They say I’ll die from the wine, but the pain won’t even let me go get the wine to kill myself.”

“Lift him,” Quinn said.

“He gonna scream,” Rosie said.

“Gotta do it,” Quinn said, and they lifted Tremont by the legs and armpits and Rosie was right, he screamed, and as they carried him down the steps he cried. Rosie opened the car door and they stretched him out on the backseat. Rosie went for his clothes and put the rolled coat under his head.

“So long, Tree honey,” she said.

Tremont writhed as the car moved, and with every jolt came a yelp, a moan. “Where we goin’?”

“Memorial Hospital,” Quinn said. “Do somethin’ for your pain.”

“I can’t stay there.”

“Yes you can.”

“You don’t know,” Tremont said. “I got a guy after me.”

“What guy?”

“Bad mother.”

“Are you talking drugs?”

“No, man. We go to the hospital you gotta stay with me. He finds out I’m there he’ll be comin’ for me.”

“Who will?”

“Zuki. He was talkin’ guns, shootin’ people.”

“What people?”

“Took me out shootin’. Wanted to see how I do. He heard the army give me those sharpshooter badges. Wanted me to shoot somebody.”

“Shoot who?”

Tremont didn’t answer.

“Who is this Zuki? He have another name?”

“No.”

“Is he black?”

“Brown.”

“Who’d he want you to shoot?”

“Talked about a landlord owns bad houses.”

“Shoot a landlord for his bad houses?”

“That’s what he say. Then he say the landlord’s gonna kill Claudia’cause she makes trouble for everybody.”

“He name this landlord?”

“Never said no names. But killin’ Claudia, that wasn’t real.”

“Who was real?”

“Can’t say.”

“You gotta say, Tremont.”

“He’ll come after me. He say this is important, and if I goof out he’ll find me, and I won’t like what happens.”

“We’ll get you protection.”

“From who, the cops? Cops’ll put me in jail forever. All Zuki’s gotta say is I was gonna shoot a politician.”

“You were?”

“That’s what he was talkin’. I told him I needed money to eat and he give me a few and said he’d see me in the mornin’. But I drank two days on that money and I ain’t seen Zuki since. When I got the pain I went to the house to lay down but I couldn’t get inside.”

“Who was the politician?”

“Can’t say.”

“This is crazy, Tremont. You can’t keep this secret if you want protection. Who was it?”

Tremont said nothing.

“Was it Bobby Kennedy? He was coming to Albany next week but they shot him last night in Los Angeles.”

“They shot Bobby? Who did?”

“Some guy nobody knows.”

“I wouldn’t shoot Bobby Kennedy.”

“Who would you shoot?”

“Wouldn’t shoot nobody.”

“Tremont, who was it?”

Tremont said nothing.

“Tremont.”

“Zuki talkin’ about the Mayor.”

“The Mayor? Alex Fitzgibbon?”

“Yeah.” Tremont was moaning.

“Where did you meet this Zuki?”

“He came into the Brothers and talked to Roy. I was there. He say ‘Let’s go have a drink,’ and I said why not and we went down to Dorsey’s.”

“Who is he? What does he do?”

“He say he’s in college.”

“Which college?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Does Roy know about shooting the Mayor?”

“Roy don’t know none of it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Zuki said nobody knows. Nobody. Him and me the only ones know. And now you-all.”

“Zuki say why he wanted to shoot the Mayor?”

“Called him a fascist fuckhead dictator. Said he’s no good.”

“You think the Mayor’s no good?”

“He ain’t done much for me, but that ain’t a reason to shoot him.”

“How’d you leave it when he gave you the money?”

“I said I’d eat somethin’ and meet him in the mornin’ at Chloe’s Diner. But I drank two days, maybe three, and then you come and got me.”

“How come Zuki didn’t go to the house to see you?”

“Zuki don’t know nothin’ about me and that house.”

“Who do you think Zuki’s working for?”

“I dunno, but he’s a bad ass.”

“What kind of gun was it?”

“AR-15 What they had in Vietnam. I never shot one of those.”

“Zuki say where you’d be when you shot the Mayor?”

“On a hill out in the mountains. Every day the Mayor goes out to see the old political boss, Patsy McCall. Sit up on that hill you got a clear shot when he gets outa the car.”

“Zuki would take you out there?”

“He talked about it.”

“What about the getaway?

“A car waitin’. Go down the other side of the mountain before anybody know where the shot came from.”

“Did you buy that?”

“You get down to the bottom of that mountain they be waitin’ for you with the Third Army.”

“But you didn’t say that to Zuki.”

“Just took the gun and said I’d see him tomorrow.”

“Where’s the gun now?”

“In a locker down at the bus station, in a black bag.”

“A black bag.”

“Yeah. Ain’t that how it goes?”

“That’s how it goes.”

“Where’s the key to the locker?”

“In my pocket.”

Tremont heard about Roy through Quinn’s story in 1965 of his one-man picket line. Roy had come to the Laborers Union every morning for six weeks but never got a day’s work from Carmine Fiore, who ran the shapeup. On the morning that a white stranger showed up and was hired, Roy painted his sign: CARMINE FIORE IS A RACIST, and walked with it.