The back of the house was dark and quiet, so I risked flashing my light. Seeing a service porch fronted by a flimsy wooden door, I tiptoed over and tried it — and found it unlocked.
I walked in flashlight first, my beam picking up dusty walls and floors, discarded lounge chairs, and a broom-closet door standing half open. Opening it all the way, I saw army officers’ uniforms on hangers, replete with campaign ribbons and embroidered insignias.
Shouted voices jerked my attention toward the house proper. Straining my ears, I discerned both white- and negro-accented insults being hurled. There was a connecting door in front of me, with darkness beyond it. The shouting had to be issuing from a front room, so I nudged the door open a crack, then squatted down to listen as best I could.
“… and I’m just tellin’ you we gots to find a place and get us off the streets,” a negro voice was yelling, “ ’cause even if we splits up, colored with colored and the whites with the whites, there is still gonna be roadblocks!”
A babble rose in response, then a shrill whistle silenced it, and a white voice dominated: “We’ll be stopping the train way out in the country. Farmland. We’ll destroy the signaling gear, and if the passengers take off looking for help, the nearest farmhouse is ten fucking miles away — and those dogfaces are gonna be on foot.”
A black voice tittered, “They gonna be mad, them soldiers.”
Another black voice: “They gonna fought the whole fucking war for free.”
Laughter, then a powerful negro baritone took over: “Enough clowning around, this is money we’re talking about and nothing else!”
“ ’Cepting revenge, mister union big shot. Don’t you forget I got me other business on that train.”
I knew that voice by heart — it had voodoo-cursed my soul in court. I was on my way out the back for reinforcements when my legs went out from under me and I fell head first into darkness.
The darkness was soft and rippling, and I felt like I was swimming in a velvet ocean. Angry shouts reverberated far away, but I knew they were harmless; they were coming from another planet. Every so often I felt little stabs in my arms and saw pinpoints of light that made the voices louder, but then everything would go even softer, the velvet waves caressing me, smothering all my hurt.
Until the velvet turned to ice and the friendly little stabs became wrenching thuds up and down my back. I tried to draw myself into a ball, but an angry voice from this planet wouldn't let me. “Wake up, shitbird! We ain’t wastin’ no more pharmacy morph on you! Wake up! Wake up, goddamnit!”
Dimly I remembered that I was a police officer and went for the .38 on my hip. My arms and hands wouldn’t move, and when I tried to lurch my whole body, I knew they were tied to my sides and that the thuds were kicks to my legs and rib cage. Trying to move away, I felt head-to-toe muscle cramps and opened my eyes. Walls and a ceiling came into hazy focus, and it all came back. I screamed something that was drowned out by laughter, and the Lizard Man’s face hovered only inches above mine. “Lee Blanchard,” he said, waving my badge and ID holder in front of my eyes. “You got sucker-punched again, shitbird. I saw Jimmy Bivins put you down at the Legion. Left hook outta nowhere, and you hit your knees, then worthless-shine muscle puts you down on your face. I got no respect for a man who gets sucker-punched by niggers.”
At “niggers” I heard a gasp and twisted around to see the negro girl in the pink dress sitting in a chair a few feet away. Listening for background noises and hearing nothing, I knew the three of us were alone in the house. My eyes cleared a little more, and I saw that the velvet ocean was a plushly furnished living room. Feeling started to return to my limbs, sharp pain that cleared my fuzzy head. When I felt a grinding in my lower back, I winced; the extra .38 snub I had tucked into my waistband at City Hall was still there, slipped down into my skivvies. Reassured by it, I looked up at Lizard Face and said, “Robbed any liquor stores lately?”
He laughed. “A few. Chump change compared to the big one this after—”
The girl shrieked, “Don’t tell him nothin’!”
Lizard Man flicked his tongue. “He’s dead meat, so who cares? It’s a train hijack, canvasback. Some army brass chartered the Super Chief, L.A. to Frisco. Poker games, hookers in the sleeping cars, smut movies in the lounge. Ain’t you heard? The war’s over, time to celebrate. We got hardware on board — shines playing porters, white guys in army suits. They all got scatterguns, and sweetie pie’s boyfriend Voodoo, he’s got himself a tommy. They’re gonna take the train down tonight, around Salinas, when the brass is smashed to the gills, just achin’ to throw away all that good separation pay. Then Voodoo’s gonna come back here and perform some religious rites on you. He told me about it, said he’s got this mean old pit bull named Revenge. A friend kept him while he was in Quentin. The buddy was white, and he tormented the dog so he hates white men worse than poison. The dog only gets fed about twice a week, and you can just bet he’d love a nice big bowl of canvasback stew. Which is you, white boy. Voodoo's gonna cut you up alive, turn you into dog food out of the can. Wanna take a bet on what he cuts off first?”
“That’s not true! That’s not what—”
“Shut up, Cora!”
Twisting on my side to see the girl better, I played a wild hunch. “Are you Cora Downey?”
Cora’s jaw dropped, but Lizard spoke first. “Smart boy. Billy Boyle’s ex, Voodoo’s current. These high-yellow coozes get around. You know canvasback here, don’t you, sweet? He sent both your boyfriends up, and if you’re real nice, maybe Voodoo’ll let you do some cutting on him.”
Cora walked over and spat in my face. She hissed “Mother” and kicked me with a spiked toe. I tried to roll away, and she sent another kick at my back.
Then my ace in the hole hit me right between the eyes, harder than any of the blows I had absorbed so far. Last night I had heard Wallace Simpkins’s voice through the door: “ ’Cepting revenge, mister union big shot. I got me other business on that train.” In my mind that “business” buzzed as snuffing Lieutenant Billy Boyle, and I was laying five-to-one that Cora wouldn’t like the idea.
Lizard took Cora by the arm and led her to the couch, then squatted next to me. “You’re a sucker for a spitball,” he said.
I smiled up at him. “Your mother bats cleanup at a two-dollar whorehouse.”
He slapped my face. I spat blood at him and said, “And you’re ugly.”
He slapped me again; when his arm followed through I saw the handle of an automatic sticking out of his right pants pocket. I made my voice drip with contempt: “You hit like a girl. Cora could take you easy.”
His next shot was full force. I sneered through bloody lips and said, “You queer? Only nancy boys slap like that.”
A one-two set hit me in the jaw and neck, and I knew it was now or never. Slurring my words like a punch-drunk pug, I said, “Let me up. Let me up and I’ll fight you man-to-man. Let me up.”
Lizard took a penknife from his pocket and cut the rope that bound my arms to my sides. I tried to move my hands, but they were jelly. My battered legs had some feeling in them, so I rolled over and up onto my knees. Lizard had backed off into a chump’s idea of a boxing stance and was firing roundhouse lefts and rights at the living room air. Cora was sitting on the couch, wiping angry tears from her cheeks. Deep breathing and lolling my torso like a hophead, I stalled for time, waiting for feeling to return to my hands.