"I didn't mean that. You make fun of oaths, but I took one to be chaste." It sounded foolish out loud.
She laughed like a man, full out, without caring who overheard. "You are that. I done chased you down myself."
"It isn't a joke."
"Sure it is. My cousin Roy took fever in basic training in Georgia. The colored doctor was new and didn't know what he was doing. Roy's brains fried. He's out on a medical discharge, but he can't even find work washing dishes. No disability; they said he was ineligible because he wasn't injured in combat. They had a white doctor on staff who specialized in viral infections, but his ethics kept him from interfering with another man's patient. His Hippocratic Oath was how he put it." She didn't look as if she'd laughed in her life.
"I'm sorry."
She drank again and set down her beer. "My friend Charlene has a place near here. She's working the swing shift tonight. It's a short walk. I've got a key."
He opened his mouth to say no. What he said was, "What do they charge for the beers?"
She reached inside a white patent-leather purse and laid a bill on the table. "I asked you out."
He got up to hold her chair. When she was standing, he put a hand on her elbow and turned toward the exit, right into a blow from something solid that filled his world with blinding pain and the bitter taste of blood.
THIRTY-TWO
"No, Brownie, no!" Rose's cries shrilled above the band, which continued to play, more raucously now as if to drown out the distraction. The Black-and-Tan was hell, a country outside mercy.
Great hands with sandpaper palms closed on Vasco's throat. He was leaking fluid out his nostrils, no oxygen was coming in through them, and now his windpipe was shut. He clawed at a pair of forearms made from sheets of burlap wound tight around iron girders. The hands shook him like a rat in a terrier's jaws, banging his head against the floor. His eyes swam with sweat and congested blood in the veins, staring into a face in which showed only the whites of the eyes and bared teeth; the rest was darkness except for red lacquered fingernails dug deep into the flesh. He thought at first this was a monster with two extra hands in reserve, but they were Rose's, groping to gouge out Brownie's eyes from behind. They were stacked three deep on the floor with Vasco on the bottom.
His vision broke into black checks as the blood in his arteries struggled to feed his brain. He felt his tongue sliding out and knew he would make a ghastly corpse in his morgue photo for some Special Agent to study on the train. Pain stabbed his chest, his heart pumping too hard to support the circulatory system. Would it give out before his lungs?
Something struck something solid with the distant sound of a hammer striking the hull of a ship beneath the waterline. The whites of the eyes inches from his face seemed to brighten, then dull as the lids rolled down to cover them. The pressure came off his windpipe and he sucked in air that filled him to bursting, just before a great weight sagged down on top of him, constricting it yet again. It was dragged off him with grunts and curses that rumbled from deep inside a great hard belly, and when it was cast aside with a contemptuous roll of a shoulder he recognized Chester the bouncer in his striped jersey, still clutching the blackjack he'd used on Brownie's head. Vasco had mistaken the object thrust under his belt for a handgun earlier.
He was helped into a sitting position by Rose, wild-faced with her hat still perched at its impossible angle on the side of her head, a comical effect; he started to laugh, but it turned into a cough. She pounded his back, which made it worse. Why did people do that? But he leaned forward, put his head between his knees, and the spasm subsided.
"Rosie, we can't have this, not with no white man. My grease don't spread that far."
When he raised his head, he saw a slight Negro on one knee beside him, facing Rose, on both knees on the other side. The man wore a white dinner jacket over what looked like a pink shirt in the dim light and a black bow tie, factory tied.
His thin face was pockmarked and his hair was black and glossy and as straight as an Indian's. It belonged on the head of a doll.
"He needs a hospital, Maurice. They both do."
"They's a clinic at Nineteenth and Sixth. I don't know as they'll take your boyfriend."
"Drive us, will you?"
"Chester'll help you get 'em into the car, but you'll have to take 'em the rest of the way. What'd I tell 'em, a bus accident? The buses don't run at night."
"I can't drive. I don't even have a car!"
"I'll drive," Vasco said.
Maurice looked at him from under lashes as long as a woman's. "Mister, your nose is done broke."
Vasco heard chuckling and realized it was coming from him. He snuffled up blood and snot. "I don't drive with my nose."
"He's game for ofay."
"Moe, I know you got something to stop bleeding." In a little while he felt wet cloth on the back of his neck, and Rose told him to hold it there while she applied another to his face, which was numb now. Her movements were gentle but efficient. "Blow. Not too hard." She was holding the cloth to his nose.
He obeyed. No one else had washed his face or blown his nose since before his mother died.
"Tell Chester to put up that sap and give me a hand."
"I'll do it," Maurice said. "He's the heavy lifter."
Brownie was partially conscious, sitting on the floor with his legs splayed and his elbows resting on his thighs, facing Vasco; they might have been playing spin-the-bottle. He wore a sport shirt printed with tropical fish, open in front, with blood staining his BVD undershirt from a trail that ran to the top of his head. His mouth sagged open and his eyes appeared to lack focus. Vasco doubted he himself looked much better. The front of his own shirt was plastered to his chest by something other than sweat and his breath whistled through his nose. Would he look like an unsuccessful prizefighter, one of those flat-faced lugs who were always appearing in the old apartment in Cicero?
He managed to stand with Maurice's support, while Chester was forced to squat and embrace Brownie under the arms and drag him backward, leaving a wake of bare planks through sawdust and peanut shucks. Incredibly, the trio continued its rapscallious medley uninterrupted; more incredibly still, couples were still dancing. Vasco interpreted this as a sign that impromptu floor shows were not unusual in the Black-and-Tan.
He directed the party to where he'd parked the Model T, Rose with her arm around his waist opposite the club owner, who left him leaning on her while he opened the rear door and helped Chester wrestle Brownie into the backseat. There he sprawled full-length, and they had to bend his knees to push the door shut.
"You don't bring him in here no more," Maurice told Rose.
"He'll be sorry to hear it, the spread you put on."
Vasco grasped the doorpost and hauled himself under the wheel. Rose got in on the passenger's side. "Sure you can drive? I bet I can learn in five blocks."
He remembered something his father had told his mother one night when he was called out after drinking all evening. "I can drive. I just can't walk."
"You're a regular Fred Allen. I guess you'll live."
"I forgot about the crank." He reached for his door handle.
"That I can do. I pull my own weight on dates."
"Keep your thumb on the same side as your fingers."
"You only got to sprain your wrist once to remember that." She got out.
Her first turn was clumsy, but she got the hang of it and the motor started with a noise like coal tumbling down a chute. While she was occupied he stole a glance at his face in the rearview mirror, but the light from the corner lamp came in at an angle that gave him only a ghost reflection. He'd have two black eyes at the least. He was shaking now, and had had to grasp his wrist with his other hand to get the key into the ignition and turn it. Driving, he grasped the wheel tightly to steady himself.
"Turn right up there," Rose said after two blocks. "I can't believe you're driving."
"Do you think my nose is really broken?"
&nbs
p; "I'm surprised he didn't push it through the back of your head."
"Is he—"
"Can we have this conversation later?"
"Of course."
The clinic was in a converted storefront, with exposed pipes and old-fashioned light switches that turned, the wires running through conduits on the walls. The staff was colored, as were the patients waiting on folding wooden chairs, men and women with tubercular coughs and a young blade in a purple zoot suit with a torn pocket, grasping a bloodied handkerchief bound around one wrist: another Saturday-night casualty. A hefty nurse in a uniform and starched cap frowned at Vasco, listened to Rose, and dispatched an elderly orderly to bring Brownie in from the car. He rolled an antique wicker wheelchair outside.
Vasco didn't see him return with the patient. The nurse escorted the young man in the zoot suit through a curtained passageway, then came back for Vasco. A storeroom had been partitioned with unpainted drywall into separate examining rooms. He sat on the end of a table upholstered in cracked leather for twenty minutes, then blinked into the bulb of a squat flashlight shone in each eye by a doctor about the age of Zoot Suit, who walked with a rolling limp: clubfoot. He inspected both nostrils with the light, then cleaned away the last trace of blood with cotton soaked in alcohol, clasped Vasco's nose between his palms, and wiggled it. That brought a clicking sound, and tears to his eyes; the numbness was wearing off. The doctor grunted—the impenetrable language of physicians black and white—and packed the nostrils with gauze and pressed a strip of sticking-plaster across the bridge.
"Deviated septum. You can pull out the packing in a couple of days. Married?"
"No." He sounded to himself like a man with a bad cold. If the doctor had spoken to Rose, she'd kept his secret.
"Fix it before your honeymoon. You'll snore till then. I wouldn't bother otherwise."
"What about the other man?"
"The big fellow? I'm keeping him on the cot overnight, in case of fracture. X-ray's broken, no parts in this neighborhood till after the war. You the one hit him?"
"No."
"Okay, then." He turned to leave.
"Doctor? How will I look?"
He turned back. "You in show business?"
"No."
"You'll look fine. Truth to tell, I don't think you were Van Johnson to begin with."
"Thank you." He felt mortified for asking. He chalked up vanity. How many were left? "I want to pay for the other man, too."
"It's a free clinic." The doctor adjusted the stethoscope around his neck, evening the ends; a fastidious man in what must have amounted to a war zone weekends. "You know, if the shoe were on the other foot—your shoe, my foot—I couldn't even sit in the waiting room."
"You don't have to tell me there's something wrong with the world."
"Seems to me I do. No more slumming, y'hear?" He'd slipped into dialect; deliberately, Vasco thought.
"Business is lively enough."
"The Black-and-Tan has seen the last of me."
"I hope the next time they close it down it sticks. I'm getting too much practice sewing up scalp wounds." He left.
Rose was standing in the waiting room, holding her purse in an awkward position at her waist. When she moved, Vasco saw she'd split a seam in her dress. He was appalled that he hadn't thought to ask if she was all right. He asked now.
"I've done worse to myself working in the kitchen," she said. "You look like you were in a fight."
He smiled weakly. "Have you seen Brownie?"
"The doc gave him something to sleep. He's got a knot on his head big as a coconut. They're holding him tonight."
"The doctor told me. I'll take you home."
Passing a house lit up for a party, he glimpsed his reflection in the windshield. His nose was swollen, the nostrils distended from the gauze. He'd been right about the black eyes.
She was watching. "Doc give you anything for the pain?"
"I think he's saving his supplies for more serious cases."
"I've got some Bufferin." She rummaged inside her purse and tore open a foil package. "You need water?" She handed him two tablets.
"They'll work faster if I chew them." His face had begun to throb. He crunched and swallowed. "I'll bring you back to the clinic tomorrow if you like."
"I would, but Brownie wouldn't. I'll tell 'em at the house he was in an accident. They'll believe that. Mr. Al rode with him just the one time and then he gave the job to Mr. Danny. I guess you know by now Brownie's kind of reckless."
"Will he say anything?"
"I don't think so. It ain't something you go around bragging about."
"I'd better stay away from the house for a while."
"Don't you bother about Brownie. I'll talk to him so he'll listen."
"I meant so they don't see me and think we were in the same accident." He drove half a block in silence, then: "He must have followed you tonight and waited for me to show up. I think Danny saw you pass me that note."
"He wouldn't tell Brownie. They don't get along so well. Brownie hates drunks."
"He was suspicious then. I think he's suspected me from the start."
"He thinks he's my Dutch uncle. I tell him I been taking care of myself this long, I can go on doing it, but he's six parts mule. Suspected you of what?" she asked suddenly.
"Rose, I'm not a priest."
They were driving through a blackout neighborhood. He couldn't see her face. They seemed to have been a very long time in the dark before she spoke. "Why tell me?"
"I had to tell someone, and I trust you."
"Why, because we fucked?"
That shocked him. No one except Capone and his father had said a profane word in his presence in months. If he'd expected it at all, he wouldn't have expected it from her. "No. Because you don't have anything to gain by telling my secret. Rose, the reason—"
"Stop!"
He was startled into slamming on the brake. Fortunately there were no cars behind him.
"Not that," she said. "Stop talking. If you tell me the reason, I'll have to tell someone."
"How do you know?"
"I just do. Drive and let's talk about something else." They resumed moving. He was deeply ashamed of himself. He'd been about to lie.
"WE had us some fun, didn't we?"
He didn't know how to reply. She sounded as casual as if they'd been talking about something else right along.
"I knew we would," she said, as if he'd agreed. "You were so serious all the time, like you were afraid if you let go you'd knock something over or pass gas. I wanted to snatch that collar off just to see what you'd do. Apologize, probably, for not buttoning it tighter. It buttons, right?"
"It buttons. It's just about the most uncomfortable thing a man can wear."
"A man, maybe. Try putting on a brassiere."
He turned into her street and coasted to a stop before the large Queen Anne house that had been cut up into apartments. The moon was up, shining on the many shades of chalky paint, a peaceful sight. The house had stood since long before wars both recent and forgotten. He wouldn't have been surprised to see a friendly goat grazing the front yard. Air raids and rationing were foreign to such a creature. They sat listening to the chucka-luck of the Ford's motor at idle. "What now?" she asked.
"We won't be seeing each other for a while."
She smiled in profile. "You sound like a story in The Saturday Evening Post. Like we killed someone and have got to lay low."
"The second part is true. It's too dangerous."
"Don't bother about Brownie, I said. He shot his wad."
"I doubt that, but it isn't him I'm worried about so much. Do you remember Frank Nitti? He came to the cabin in Wisconsin that last day."
"I couldn't forget him. Those eyes look right through you."
"He thinks I'm up to something. He sent someone to follow me."
"This have anything to do with that man today?"
"I wish that hadn't happened. Now he'll be sure I have something to
hide and ran to Capone for help."
"That man won't be back."
"There are others. If you're seen with me they'll think we're in it together. They won't be as easy to handle as Brownie. Big Chester the bouncer's an amateur in their world. They graduated from blackjacks a long time ago."
"I know. I keep thinking about that colored politician in Chicago. They ran him to ground like a deer and shot him to pieces. He wasn't even a threat. He was black and didn't want to shovel coal."
"You understand, then."
"I don't see any more risk than always. I don't mean about being with a man everyone thinks is a priest. I mean the other thing."
"There is, though. These are professionals. We could deal with the occasional hothead, but these people don't give up until you're dead."
"You think hotheads give up?"
"Well, then, consider that. It doubles the odds against us."
"Doubles the reward, too, don't forget."
"At the track. Not here. Rose, it's suicide."
"Who you afraid for, you or me?"
She was facing him. The moon was behind her, but he could see her eyes by the glisten.
He wet his lips. "Me."
The motor kept running, wasting gas. Suddenly she laughed that loud man's laugh. "Liar." A hand slid inside his thigh.
HE drove back through moonlight, the brightest thing around. His face hurt and now his stomach muscles were sore, although she had done most of the moving. The less traveled streets were unlit to discourage enemy bombers and all the neon signs were extinguished because of the curfew. The ghostly white circle of a flashlight waggled down a side street, followed by a man in a white tin pan Civil Defense helmet, on the prowl for unnecessary illumination.
It had been a very long night, and when he checked his watch while waiting for a signal to change he was surprised to see it was only three o'clock. He'd been expecting dawn any time. He seemed to have most of the city to himself. He passed a police sedan rolling slowly through a residential neighborhood, its search beam poking at bushes and into narrow alleys, and on the third floor of a hotel for permanents and transients the pale orange glow of a radio dial opposite a window, but these things served only to make him feel more isolated. If anyone were following him, he'd have spotted him in a moment. Nitti would need time to put another man into position, but he wouldn't waste any. Vasco fully expected to be back under observation by morning.
The Confessions of Al Capone Page 48
