“Yeah?” he said.
“You okay in there?” Jeanine said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“All right to come in? I’ve got some clothes for you.”
“What?”
“You can’t leave here in your own clothes, all that blood on them.”
“Oh, sure. Come on in.”
The door opened. The shower curtain billowed in toward him, the plastic sticking to his legs. The water was drumming against his groin, his prick was standing up stiff with the water drilling it and the soap running off him in long white streams.
“I’ll put them here on the counter,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“I hope the pants fit you.”
“Yeah,” he said. He heard the door opening and closing again. The room was full of steam now, he was beginning to tremble from the steady pressure of the water. Abruptly, he turned off the shower, and then pushed the curtain back on the rod, and stepped out of the tub.
He looked down at himself. He looked around the room. He found a clean towel and dried himself, and then found the clothes she’d brought him, Jocko’s brother’s clothes, he guessed. There was no underwear or socks, only a pair of pants and what looked like an old sweater. Just the thing he needed on a hot August night, a ratty old sweater. He put on the pants without any underwear, and debated putting on the bloodstained shirt again, but decided in favor of the sweater, no matter how damn hot it was. He still had to go down in the street, and all he needed was some cop stopping to ask about the blood on his shirt. There was only a little blood on one of his socks, so he put on the socks and shoes, and then he combed his hair with a comb he found on the countertop, lots of long blond hair tangled in it, probably Jeanine’s. He lifted the gun from the toilet tank and put it in his pocket. He pulled back his shoulders and opened the bathroom door.
Jeanine was standing in the doorway to the bedroom.
“He’s still out,” she said.
“Yeah,” Colley said. “Listen, I’m gonna split now. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
She walked him to the front door. He could hear the clock ticking. “Be careful,” she said, and unlocked the door for him.
“Goodnight,” he said.
He stepped into the hallway. The door closed behind him. He heard her fastening all the locks again. He looked at his watch as he went down the hallway to the elevator. It was close to midnight, another day. He rang for the elevator and stood watching the indicator bar as the elevator crept up the shaft, these goddamn projects never put in quality merchandise.
When he reached the street he began walking toward the train station on Westchester Avenue. He thought about the job as he walked, thought about how wrong the job had gone, couldn’t have gone wronger — he’d killed one cop, Jocko had shot another one. Shit, he thought. Times he wanted to quit this fuckin racket, get himself a nice girl, his mother was always telling him to get himself a nice Italian girl, settle down someplace. Times like tonight he was tempted to do it. Who the hell needed this kind of life?
He felt the gun in the pocket of the pants.
Its bulk felt good against his leg.
Three
There was trouble in the street.
He got back to the old neighborhood at a little past midnight, but he was afraid to go into his mother’s block because there were two police cruisers parked just outside the pizzeria. The heat hadn’t let up a bit, the night was still sticky and moist. Men were milling around in their undershirts; women in flowered housedresses were standing with their hands on their hips, looking up the street toward the police cars. Most of them were black.
The neighborhood had been strictly Italian when Colley was growing up, and then it had turned Puerto Rican, and now it was black. His mother still lived here, you couldn’t dynamite her out of that apartment. She’d been living upstairs from the pizzeria for twenty years, from when Colley was nine years old. Had black friends who came in for coffee every morning. Nice black ladies who’d moved uptown to the Bronx, same as Colley’s mother had twenty years ago. Nice black ladies whose sons Colley had probably met when he was doing three-to-seven upstate for armed robbery.
He wanted to get rid of the gun.
He wanted to get out of these borrowed clothes and hide the gun someplace; those police cars up the street were making him nervous. He stopped a white guy going by and asked him what the trouble was.
“Nigger cut somebody in the bar,” the guy said.
“The pizzeria, you mean?”
“Yeah,” the guy said, and walked off.
Colley looked up the block again, and then began walking in the opposite direction, around the corner and onto the avenue. This was Saturday night, he didn’t expect to find Benny home, but he went up the three flights to Benny’s apartment anyway, and knocked on the door and waited.
“Yeah?” a voice said.
“Benny? It’s me. Colley.”
“Colley? Hey, Colley!” Benny said through the door, and Colley heard him fumbling with the lock, good old Benny, and then he threw the door wide and looked out at Colley, beaming, his arms spread, his head tilted, his palms open; he looked like a jolly fat pope giving a blessing. “Paisan,” he said.
“Hey, paisan,” Colley said warmly, and stood there nodding foolishly, and grinning, and opening his hands the way Benny had his hands open, but suspecting he didn’t look anywhere near as popelike as Benny did. “You gonna ask me in?” he said.
“No,” Benny said, “I’m gonna let you stand in the hall. You hear this?” he said to someone in the apartment. “He wants to know if I’m gonna let him in.”
“So let me in already,” Colley said. He was chuckling now, Benny always made him chuckle. He hadn’t seen Benny for maybe six or seven months, since just after he’d thrown in with Jocko. He had put on weight, Benny had. He’d been fat ever since Colley could remember, but now he was even fatter. He put his arm around Colley and led him into the apartment.
A girl was sitting at the kitchen table. There was an empty glass in front of her, ice cubes melting in it. The girl was maybe nineteen years old. She was wearing a long flowing white robe with embroidery around the yoked neck, tooled sandals, a red-and-white-striped kerchief on her head. She had black hair and brown eyes and a very dark complexion. She was even darker than Benny, whose grandparents had come from Palermo around the turn of the century. Everybody on the block used to kid Benny about him being half-nigger. This was when they had the club. Benny used to say, “I’ll give you half-nigger,” and throw the arm salute. He really was very dark, but not as dark as the girl.
“This is Naomi Bernstein,” Benny said. “Naomi, meet my best friend in the entire world — Colley Donato.”
“How do you do, Colley?” she said, and extended her hand.
“Naomi’s from Mosholu Parkway,” Benny said. “I met her in Poe Park.”
“Is Colley short for something?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Nicholas.”
“I’ll bet a lot of people ask you that.”
“Only everybody I meet,” Colley said. “But it’s better than Nick. Nick sounds like every wop you meet in the street.”
“Don’t get offended,” Benny said.
“Who’s offended?” Naomi said.
“Colley’s Italian, it’s okay for him to say it. Naomi belongs to— What’s the name of it?”
“You know the name of it.”
“I forget,” Benny said, and shrugged. “It’s an organization protects niggers, spics, wops and kikes,” he said, and burst out laughing.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” Naomi said.
“You want a drink, Colley?” Benny said.