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

Quinn called Renata on his way to interview the Mayor and she told him that Alfie and Max were fugitives from a major drug bust, and that Max wanted her to get him into Cuba.

“How does he think you’ll do that?”

“Through Moncho.”

“Isn’t that far-fetched?”

“Moncho has connections and Max is ready to buy his way in.”

“Max has money?”

“He gave me six thousand cash. He wanted to give me ten,” Renata said.

“For what?”

“I asked him for two thousand last week to pay Gloria’s hospital bill. I said it was for our mortgage.”

“You ask for two and he gives you six.”

“He’s a generous man, he always was.”

“Did you find a way to reward his generosity?”

“Not yet. Gloria heard Max talking about Cuba and now she wants to go down there with him.”

“She wants to be anywhere but here. How is she?”

“Max perked her up. I think she likes criminals.”

“Of course. That’s why she took up with Alex. I’m seeing him at seven at the Fort Orange Club.”

“Tell him I spit on the tits of his mother.”

“I’ll try to work that in,” Quinn said.

“Can you find out if the police are really looking for Max?”

“Where was the bust?”

“Miami, Alfie’s house and loft. They found a few ounces of marijuana but Alfie wasn’t there.”

“Did it get into the papers?”

“In a big way.”

“How does Max come into it?”

“Somebody saw him in Julian Stewart’s movie last month and recognized him as the man who delivered money for Alfie. Max now carries a gun.”

“Why does a fugitive with a gun spend a public afternoon at Cody’s bar?”

“Max is not logical. Maybe he decided not to behave like a fugitive.”

“Then he won’t be a fugitive long. Are you and Gloria going to Cody’s concert?”

“I hope so. I put Gloria back to bed so she’ll be rested,” Renata said.

“And will Max go?”

“We haven’t discussed it. I think Max is sick. Maybe seriously sick.”

“From what?”

“I don’t know. He’s very thin, and he seems obsessed with death.”

“Crime doesn’t agree with him.”

“I’ll try to meet you there. Pop is going too, with a woman he met someplace.”

“Pop with a woman?”

“Vivian something, she knew my parents years ago. She’s fine.”

“George has never gone with another woman.”

“We don’t know that. Sometimes people start over.”

“You really think so?”

“You couldn’t prove it by me.”

Renata had been leaving Quinn for years, but not yet, and not for anyone; though there were two or three in waiting, not including Max. The Santeria marriage warning lingered, Floreal saying a knitting woman was trying to save me from I never knew what, and the babalawo ’s advice last month that this wasn’t a good time for separation. And Gloria: no way I can leave her alone. I am my grandmother, who knows, who knows how to lead her away from disaster, how to sort out her chaotic sex. But Renata, how do you do that? Become her therapist? Love, oh yes, love. She and Quinn had begun well with love. It had been instant, true as blood, and it lasted, but it evolved into love-in-waiting, starved for joy. Renata found joy elsewhere, furtive alliances with guapos y jóvenes who kept her from boredom, filled her cup, addictive. She might break the addiction if she replaced Quinn, or if Quinn replaced himself. But how? He’s forty. Can an old dog teach himself old tricks? Well, he does find his way, perfume on the coat collar, out till three exploring the night, Giselle always here for their family reunions.

“I’ll be at the concert,” Renata said. “I don’t know who I’ll be with.”

“You never do,” Quinn said.

George and Vivian were walking on North Pearl, taking the long way to the DeWitt Clinton Hotel and Cody’s concert. They were under the Kenmore Hotel’s marquee and George stopped and looked in through the glass door toward the old lobby. It was a mess. A welfare hotel now.

“My father lived here,” he said. “He was friends with the rich colored man who owned it. His name, what’s his name? My father thought the world of him, I think he wrote about him. What was his name, Eb, Ebble, there was a slave in there somewhere. Blee, Blay. He built the hotel, high class.”

A flung rock smashed the storefront window of what used to be the Kenmore bar, and flying glass cut George’s head. He and Vivian turned to see six young negroes across the street, all with rocks in their hands.

“Hey you,” George yelled, “what the hell are you throwing rocks for?” One of them threw another rock and broke the window of the Federal Bakery and the six then moved up Pearl Street. Vivian saw George’s head was bleeding and she took his pocket handkerchief and blotted the cut. She walked him four steps to a parked car so he could lean against it and she gave him the handkerchief to press on the wound to stanch the blood. She picked up his hat from the sidewalk and saw George staring again into the old Kenmore lobby.

“Adam Blake owned this hotel,” he said, “and his father was Adam before him, a slave born in 1770 who died at ninety-four up on Third Street in Arbor Hill, and my father wrote about him because the old man, the old Adam, was king of the Pinksters, the big holiday when the slaves sang and danced all week on State Street hill. When my father went to Cuba he saw somebody dancing just like Adam danced in the Pinksterfest, only he was in the jungle. Young Adam was a prince of a fella, everybody loved him, you couldn’t ask for better, he had money and style and he made the Kenmore the best hotel in Albany.”

George seemed to have sudden and total recall of those old times, with more control of specifics than Vivian had heard from him all day. A siren wailed, coming this way, and they saw the six young negroes running toward Clinton Avenue, breaking windows in a liquor store and the Grand Cash meat market as they went.

“This is like Petey Hawkins,” George said. “His barber shop was right around the next corner, on Sheridan, and he gave me many a haircut, because he was my only colored customer when I cut hair myself. I was in his place the week of the Jeffries-Johnson fight and I told Petey I’d take Jeffries and he says, George, don’t bet against Jack, he can’t lose, he wants it too much, his daddy was a slave and he wants to be as big as President Arthur, he tells his mama that. Jack’s been to Albany and I shaved him when he wasn’t the champion and he’s gonna come here again and I’m gonna shave him as the world champion. He’s gonna be a great man and he sure gonna win this fight, George, and I don’t wanna take your money. I got ten bucks says it’s Jeffries, I said. Georgie, Georgie, tell you what, don’t give me no money, and I’ll pay you ten if you win but if you lose you ride me down Pearl Street in a wheelbarrow, down to State Street and back to the barbershop, and I said, Petey, you’ll never take that ride, but you’re on.

“He was taking a ton of bets, odds were ten to seven against Jack, and Petey bet every nickel he had and was holdin’ money in his safe for dozens of other bets, most honest man in Albany and everybody knew it. Jeffries was this huge, hairy Irishman, world champ, retired undefeated in nineteen-five after twenty fights when he run out of challengers. Johnson lost two fights out of sixty-four and took the world heavyweight title from Tommy Burns in Australia with a TKO. But all this country’d give him was the colored world title. Yet he beat every white man that come along and he kept saying, I want the champ, I want Jeffries, but Jeffries wouldn’t fight him. Jack kept up the nag and then five years after he quit the ring Jeffries says, all right I’ll come back and beat your black ass, and every Irishman in Albany was for him. The fight was in Reno in front of fifteen thousand and the big-time champs were there — Corbett, Fitzsimmons, John L., Tommy Burns, all with Jeffries. But Stanley Ketchel said different. Ketchel knocked Johnson down in nineteen-nine but Johnson got up and hit him an uppercut and got two of Ketchel’s teeth in his glove. Ketchel knew the man and he said Johnson’s gonna send Big Jim out of this town with a broken heart. Petey and I went down to Beaver Street, front of the Times Union , to get the teletype bulletins round-by-round. They’d read ’em out loud with a megaphone and then post ’em on a big board. First three rounds Johnson’s playin’ with Jeffries and by six everybody knows Jeffries is outclassed and after eleven he’s hopeless. Petey says to me, You own a wheelbarrow, Georgie? Johnson knocked Jeffries down twice in the fifteenth and then stood over him with fists up. Back before the first round Jim Corbett was saying, He’s gonna kill you, Jack, and Jack says, That’s what they all say, but now Jeffries is down and Corbett’s yelling, Don’t, Jack, don’t hit him. Then Jeffries gets up and Jack throws a right cross and two left hooks and down he goes forever, bloody and senseless, his mother wouldn’t recognize that face. His doctor jumps in the ring and says, Stop it, don’t put the old fellow out. They sit him in the corner and Jeffries says, I was too old, I couldn’t come back. Only mark on Johnson was an old lip cut Jeffries reopened with one of the few he put in Jack’s mush. Jack beat him fair and square, no yellow streak in the man. He’s the champ. Nobody’ll beat the Big Black.