“Who’s Betty?”
“You’ve been sleeping in her bed,” I said.
“Thank her for me.”
“She’s in the next room. You can thank her yourself.”
“Can you walk?” Hardman said.
“Is there a drink in the next room along with Betty?”
“Sure.”
“I can walk.”
He could, although he moved slowly. I carried the forbidden shoes. Padillo paused at the door and put one hand on the jamb to brace himself. Then he walked on into the livingroom. “Thanks for the use of your bed, Betty,” he said to the tall brown girl.
“You’re welcome. How you feel?”
“A little rocky, but I think it’s mostly dope. Who bandaged me?”
“Doctor.”
“He give me a shot?”
“Uh-huh. Should be bout worn off.”
“Just about is.”
“Man wants a drink,” Hardman said. “What you like?”
“Scotch, if you have it,” Padillo said.
Hardman poured a generous drink and handed it to Padillo. “How’s yours, Mac?”
“It’s okay.”
“Mush’ll be here any minute,” Hardman said. “He’ll take you down to the hotel.”
“Where am I staying?” Padillo asked.
“At your suite in the Mayflower.”
“My suite?”
“I booked it in your name and it’s paid for monthly out of your share of the profits. It’s small — but quietly elegant. You can take it off your income tax if you ever get around to filing it.”
“How’s Fredl?”
“We got married.”
“You’re lucky.”
Hardman looked at his watch. “Mush’ll be here any minute,” he said again.
“Thanks for all your help — yours and Betty’s,” Padillo said.
Hardman waved a big hand. “You saved us having a big razzoo in Baltimore. What you mess in that for?”
Padillo shook his head slowly. “I didn’t see your friend. I just turned a corner and there they were. I thought they were after me. Whichever one had the knife knew how to use it.”
“You off that boat?” Hardman said.
“Which one?”
“The Frances Jane.”
“I was a passenger.”
“Didn’t run across a little old Englishman, name of Landeed, about fifty or fifty-five, with crossed eyes?”
“I remember him.”
“He get off the boat?”
“Not in Baltimore,” Padillo said. “His appendix burst four days out of Monrovia. They stored him away in the ship’s freezer.”
Hardman frowned and swore. He put heart into it. The chimes rang and Betty went to open the door and admitted a tall Negro dressed in a crow-black suit, white shirt, and dark maroon tie. He wore sunglasses at two-thirty in the morning.
“Hello, Mush,” I said.
He nodded at me and the nod took in Betty and Hardman. He crossed over to Padillo. “How you feeling?” His voice was precise and soft.
“Fine,” Padillo said.
“This is Mustapha Ali,” Hardman told Padillo. “He’s the cat that brought you down from Baltimore. He’s a Black Muslim, but you can call him Mush. Everybody else does.”
Padillo looked at Mush. “Are you really a Muslim?”
“I am,” the man said gravely.
Padillo said something in Arabic. Mush looked surprised, but responded quickly in the same language. He seemed pleased.
“What are you talkin, Mush?” Hardman asked.
“Arabic.”
“Where you learn Arabic?”
“Records, man, records. I’ll need it when I get to Mecca.”
“You the goddamndest cat I ever seen,” Hardman said.
“Where’d you learn Arabic?” Mush asked Padillo.
“From a friend.”
“You speak it real good.”
“I’ve had some practice lately.”
“We’d better get you to the hotel,” I told Padillo. He nodded and stood up slowly.
“Thanks very much for all your help,” he said to Betty. She said it was nothing and Hardman said he would see me tomorrow at lunch. I nodded, thanked Betty, and followed Padillo out to Mush’s car. It was a new Buick, a big one, and had a telephone in the front and a five-inch Sony television in the back.
“I want to stop by my place on the way to the hotel,” I said to Mush. “It won’t take long.”
He nodded and we drove in silence. Padillo stared out the window. “Washington’s changed,” he said once. “What happened to the streetcars?”
“Took em off in ’sixty-one,” Mush said.
Fredl and I lived in one of those new brick and glass apartments that have blossomed just south of Dupont Circle in a neighborhood that once was made up of three- and four-story rooming houses that catered to students, waiters, car washers, pensioners, and professional tire changers. Speculators tore down the rooming houses, covered the ground with asphalt, and called them parking lots for a while. When enough parking lots were put together, the speculators would apply for a government-insured loan, build an apartment house, and call it The Melanie or The Daphne after a wife or a girl friend. The rents for a two-bedroom apartment in those places were based on the supposition that both husband and wife were not only richly employed, but lucky in the stockmarket.
Nobody ever seemed to care what had happened to the students, waiters, car washers, pensioners and the professional tire changers.
Mush parked the car in the circular driveway where it said no parking and we rode the elevator up to the eighth floor.
“Fredl will be glad to see you,” I told Padillo. “She might even invite you to dinner.” I opened the door. The light from one large lamp burned in the livingroom, but the lamp had been knocked to the floor and the shade was lying a foot or so away. I went over and picked up the lamp, put it on the table, and replaced the shade. I looked in the bedrooms, but that seemed a foolish thing to do. She wasn’t there. I walked back into the livingroom and Padillo was standing near the record player, holding a piece of paper in his right hand. Mush stood by the door.
“A note,” I said.
“A note,” he agreed.
“But not from Fredl.”
“No. It’s from whoever took her away.”
“A ransom note,” I said. I didn’t want to read it.
“Sort of.”
“How much do they want?”
Padillo saw that I didn’t want to read the note. He put it down on the coffee table.
“Not much,” he said. “Just me.”
Reflecting
by Rhozier “Roach” Brown
(Written in 1969)
Lorton, VA
Two hands resting on bars of steel
Wondering was all this really real
Living from day to day using dope
Death was waiting with a steel rope.
Living a life I thought was pretty cool
Moving in a hurry and breaking all the rules
Stepping on anyone who got in my way
Never expecting any dues to pay.
I was hooked quite early, and dying quick
Staying high and fly, and pretty slick
The world passed by and I was in a deep nod
To awake a young old man and find no God.
Wine and reefers were a part of my song
Getting my kicks and doing wrong
It’s a miracle, how I managed to survive
Riding a pale white horse, bent on suicide.
Her eyes are moist, bursting from within
Alone and crushed, her man in the pen
Patiently she tried and done all she could
It didn’t work, it just wasn’t any good.
I killed all the love that stood in my path
Love was for suckers, and I was in a Hip Bag
If only I had listened, or even cared
My youth and dreams, wouldn’t die in here.