There was another absolute silence; perhaps my size made Loud-mouth stop grinning. But I'd already made the mistake; now Thomas had to make a play. He said, “You damn nigger!” and got up swinging his right. I caught his hand, twisted it hard behind his back, still facing his buddies. The pain made Thomas double over and when he tried to kick back at me I pulled him up sharply, then let go suddenly. He fell to the floor and his hat came off.
I said, “That wasn't smart. I have a lot of size on you. Behave and take it slow. I'm not looking for trouble.”
“I'll kill you!” he said, the phony drawl gone from his voice.
“If you get up, kid, you'll get hurt.”
His right hand went to his back pocket, he started to get up, then he ran his left hand through his blond hair and sat down. Big-mouth said, “Don't get in an uproar, Mister. He didn't mean nothing.”
“I know he didn't; that's why I don't want him to get up—and get hurt. Or you punks to get any childish ideas about rushing me.” I tossed a dime on the counter, for the last cup of Java, said, “It's all been good clean fun, fellows,” and walked out.
I was so mad at myself I could have cried. Moore the super-eye, lousing up fifteen hundred bucks! But hell, I couldn't have let him call me what he did.
I walked to the subway station and it was deserted. He'd certainly spot me if I hung around there. I went out and stopped a cab. Thomas lived on West Twenty-fourth Street, according to the data Miss Robbens had given me. I had the cabbie drive me to the Twenty-third Street station. There were a lot of people around, waiting for the morning papers to come up, most of them whites. I took a plant in a dark doorway across the street from the subway entrance, made a note of the cab fare. I tried to kid myself that the coffeepot incident hadn't been too bad; I'd heard his voice and that might come in handy. But I knew how dumb I'd been. If Thomas ever spotted me again he might think I was a real cop and take a powder. Putting on that tough act had been stupid for him too. Suppose the cops had run the both of us in, found out he was wanted? That must have been why he didn't get up, come at me with his knife.
I saw Thomas come out of the subway exit, alone. He stopped at a news-stand, talked to the old man running it, and bought a copy of Popular Mechanics. There was a chain cafeteria on the corner, a few stores from where I was standing. Thomas went in. He was a lad who loved to eat store food. I walked by the window. He wasn't eating but was talking to a bus girl in a white uniform. She looked about nineteen, one of these pale, delicate-looking kids you see among poor whites. Pale and delicate from not eating regularly when they were kids.
From the low, intimate way they were talking, the smile on both their faces, she could be his girl. After a few minutes he gave her hand a slight pat and left, walking up a block and into his street, then running up the steps of the small tenement that was now a rooming house according to an old sign over the entrance. I watched the windows but couldn't see his light. But then, I didn't know if his room was an outside one or not. I wondered how Kay had gotten all the info, even the apartment and room number. I was sure Thomas was in for the night, would read his magazine in bed.
I went back to the cafeteria, had a glass of water. All the help had their names in plastic holders pinned to the canvas uniforms. She was Mary Burns. I crossed the street and found a phone booth in a cigar store. Of course there were a lot of Burnses, including one at a nearby address that I put down. It could be her father, her home address. It was a few minutes after nine and I phoned Miss Robbens' apartment. I heard music and voices in the background as she answered. I told her what I'd done—but not about the coffeepot trouble—and in a guarded voice she said, “You don't have to work that hard, yet. But I'm pleased you're so conscientious.”
“Make things smoother when the program comes on and I really have to stick to him. Tomorrow I'll take him to work, check him again when he leaves. Call you.”
“That's fine, Touie, what are you doing now?”
“Nothing.”
“I have some people in, interesting folk, why don't you come up?”
“Well, I... uh ...” I fingered my face. Although I only have to worry about that “five-o'clock shadow” every other day, I needed a shave.
She mistook my hesitation for something else. “It's all right, these are liberal-minded people,” she whispered, maybe not realizing what she was saying.
“Wasn't even thinking of that. I need a shave.”
“Oh, forget that. Are you coming?”
“Okay.” If I expected Robbens to make contacts for me on Madison Avenue, I'd have to keep in close touch with her.
Outside, without thinking, I looked around for a barbershop. The only one I saw was closed, not that it would have mattered if it had been open. When I was nineteen I was downtown when I heard that a tobacco company was hiring Negro salesmen for summer jobs. I couldn't get a shave downtown, and by the time I went up to Harlem and back the jobs were filled. I bought a razor and blades in the cigar store, rode a bus up to Penn Station, shaved in the men's room. In the car crosstown to Miss Robbens' place on Thirty-seventh street, I jotted down the cab fare, and as an afterthought threw in the buck I'd spent for the razor.
She lived in a remodeled brownstone, and, judging by the number of them, fixing up brownstones must be the major industry in New York City. When she buzzed the door open I took a tiny elevator I could just about get into to the third floor. Kay was waiting at the door in tight buckskin pants, a dark blue turtle-neck sweater that did a lot for her figure and set off her neat face and copper hair. She had a silver coin belt around her waist and odd leather slippers with tiny bells on them. She led me into a large living room done in Swedish modern, including a working fireplace, and a crazy kind of wallpaper that seemed patches of violent colours.
There was a couple on the floor before the fireplace, a guy sprawled on the couch, and a woman making a shaker of cocktails. They all stared at me with studied interest, as if they'd been boring each other before and behold, a conversation piece enters. I wondered which of the men was her husband. After she hung up my coat and hat, Kay introduced me around. The couple on the floor were man and wife and he was a writer. He was also toasting slivers of potato in the fire, using a long wooden stick, and carefully eating each sliver himself as he took it out of the flames. His name was Hank. I never did get his wife's name. The guy on the couch was named Steve McDonald and Kay said, “Steve is the current white-haired boy at Central. He originated a new show I'm doing publicity for. And last, but by no means least, this is Barbara—we share this coop.”
Steve was one of these long drinks of water, with the slim build of a distance runner, and hair crew-cut so short it seemed to be painted on his narrow head. He had a habit, I saw later, of opening his eyes wide to emphasize whatever he was saying. Anyway he wasn't worrying about wrinkling his thick striped sport coat and flannel pants, lying in them.
Barbara was a trim babe with a young figure but her face looked washed out and tired and her carefully brushed hair was a silky gray all over, so it probably was a dye job. It was all wrong for her face. She said, “Hello, Touie, Kay has told me about you. Want Scotch or a hot buttered rum?”
Before I could answer Kay said, “Touie must try the rum.”
“As you wish,” Barbara said, pouring rum into a thick cup, then a slab of butter, a shake of some kind of spices. Walking to the fireplace, she knelt over Hank and swung a small copper teakettle around, poured some hot water into the cup. She was wearing a plain print dress and when she bent over her hips were lovely and full. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Steve, the couchboy, watching her hips. Then he popped his eyes at me and grinned.