One to Count Cadence

by James Crumley

  “Get up, you fat mother-fucker,” I said. “You lay there, I’m gonna shoot you in the guts, then drop you in the bay. Right there,” I said, and kicked him again. A line of spittle and puke crept out the side of his mouth. He was finally afraid now. “Okay, fat boy, I’m going to let you go now. But I want you to remember something.” I had learned enough about Manila minor gangster operations from the ex-priest to carry this off. “Remember Mr. Taruc at the Yellow Bar. Remember how he liked to knock soldiers in the head, then drop them in the blood gutters. Remember. You will also remember that last month someone shot Mr. Taruc’s legs off with a Thompson as he stepped out his bar door. Remember that. But he wasn’t dead. Two Molotov cocktails did that. Did you hear how he burned, did they tell you what color the flames were, did they tell you how he smelled? I know, fat boy — he was fat too wasn’t he — I know because I did it. Mr. Taruc doesn’t knock American soldiers in the head any more, does he? My sergeant and I stopped that. Remember you’re fat, you’d burn well too.” I went on, mixing up a story Tetrick had told me about a real incident in India after the war with the late lamented demise of Mr. Taruc. I think he finally believed me. Worst of all, I think Terri started to believe me. Mr. Garcia left, wobbling like a man after a bad accident, leaving me to clean up my own mess behind him.

  “Why you do that?” Terri asked, as I got a beer. “Why?”

  Everything spilled out at once. “Why? You want to know why? The weather, the Army, my screwed up life. You want to know something worth knowing, ask me why I didn’t kill him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to blow his fat, ugly guts all over the bar. But I didn’t. Sometimes I get unhappy. Sometimes life is too much. Why? Why? I don’t know why.” I spoke mostly to my beer bottle, then took a long cool drink from it.

  “You sound like Joe Morning,” she said, seemingly far behind me. “Most time you are gentle man, Jake, but today you have kill in your heart. I sorry for you.” She was crying; I could tell without looking around. I’d heard the sound before. “He offer me one thousand pesos a month to live with him,” she said. “I am. Goodbye.” She walked out after Mr. Garcia, but stopped at the door. “Maybe I keep him from having you killed,” she said.

  “You’ve been seeing to many American movies,” I said without looking up.

  She went on into the afternoon sunlight wearing the same black pants, the same black jersey, the same lovely bare feet soft in the grass. And I knew exactly how her breasts rippled under the jersey, knew exactly the animal smell of her body, satin skin over a cat’s muscles, the way her legs climbed my body when she really wanted me, the night rain of kisses after she came. She was right, I thought, but I couldn’t help thinking, What if I’d let him kick the shit out of me? Would she have stayed? No matter. It died aborning, conceived in violence, buried in hate, how could it be love? Once more Krummel loses to a loser. How fucking quaint.

  I finished my beer and left. There was no rain as I walked back to the hotel down the stinking bay front. No rain. Nothing so conclusive as that.

  * * *

  Morning was still in the room, but drunk now, and the two large suitcases still sat heavily in the center of the room, not treasure now, but a sad burden.

  “Off your ass, trooper. Let’s sell some cigarettes.”

  ” ‘Bout time you did some work around this place, fella,” he said, rolling off the bed to call the drop man.

  The drop man came for us in an old Chevrolet. He was small, nervous, and in a hurry. Usually the transaction took place in the moving car, but he said it was too late and he needed to pick up the money at another place, so he drove us to Pasay City and parked in front of a wood and thatch house on a narrow dirt lane. Morning and I carried the suitcases in the house as the drop man hurried off down the street, explaining that he had to pick up the money. A tall, busty broad in a red dress met us at the door, laughed huskily at the weight of the suitcases, asked us to sit, then, in the same voice, the voice an American mother might use to ask a child if he would like cookies and milk, asked us if we wanted a quick blow-job. I said, thank you, no, but Morning asked, How much. Nothing, she said, A customer service, and laughed again. “Isthey inkstay,” I said, “Let’s cut,” but Morning said “Onay,” then followed the chick into the bedroom, her big legs rustling against the red satin of her dress.

  Inside, he later told me, she stripped him quickly, laid his clothes on a chest at the foot of the bed, then undressed except for her bra, and went to work. With her body hiding his pants, the floor opened, or something, and one hundred sixty pesos disappeared from his wallet, leaving him, as Filipino thieves usually did, enough money to get back to Base. Morning asked her to remove her bra, but she just laughed, and spat against the wall, he said.

  After ten minutes or so two men in loud baggy sport shirts walked in the front door. I stood, expecting anything. Neither of them were the drop man, but both looked like cheap hoods. My first thought was that Mr. Garcia was about to have his revenge (which may or may not have been true; if true, he revenged himself on Joe Morning, not me; a refreshing change, if true).

  “You are off limits, you know, GI Joe,” the younger of the two said. “You could get in bad trouble, GI Joe.” His voice dripped threat.

  “I’m in a private home, Jack, and my name isn’t GI Joe, and just who the hell are you?” I said, the fire of fear and anger blooming again.

  The older man looked on in disgust, then took out a battered card in a plastic case from his hip pocket, slowly, though, so I might mistake it for a gun.

  “Pasay City Secret Service,” the younger said, meaning, as I knew, a fancy New World name for the vice squad. Once more, slowly for effect, “Pasay City Secret Service.”

  “Spartanburg Mickey Mouse Club,” Morning said in the doorway, tucking in his shirt. “What the fuck’s up?”

  “Talk nice, GI Joe,” the younger said, flashing his card, too, which was only in slightly better shape than the other’s. “We have report that two crazy stupid American GIs down here in off limits place. Bad place. Very bad. American GIs come here by mistake, sometimes have bad trouble. Sometimes fall down die. Sometimes,” the threat now clear in his tone, then doing a silent movie double take, he saw the suitcases, “Those belong you, GI Joe?”

  “Maybe. What about it, fuzz?” Morning said, his voice cool with anger now. “You boys fixin’ to stir up a hornet’s nest,” he said in his best Ku Klux Klan voice, but they didn’t understand.

  “If not yours, then must be mine,” the younger cop said, a fat grin on his thin face. This was getting silly. The older one was stocky, looking a little like a cop, but he was still small, maybe 5‘7”, 155, and the younger one was even smaller. And they wanted to take on the pride of the 721st. I didn’t know if they had pistols or guys outside. One or the other though.

  “They’re mine, bud. All mine,” Morning said, quietly, turning his left side to the two cops.

  “Then captain must see,” the younger said, smiling still wider, playing the game to the hilt. “We will take to captain, yes?” but not a question at all.

  “How?” Morning said. “Just how?”

  I looked for something to swing, but the room was furnished with a single rickety wooden table and chair, a cheap vinyl couch, and a whore’s altar, plastic saints, nickel candles, and a slant-eyed Christ. Nothing a dissatisfied customer might get a purchase on.

  The younger cop, smiling like a Buddha now, slowly raised the bottom of his gaily printed shirt, revealing the butt of a nickel-plated .45 stuck in his waistband. “Take it off, honey,” he said, then did a bump and grind.

  “Ease off, Joe,” I said. “They’d love to shoot us in the backs and say we were resisting arrest. Keep your face to them, and your mouth shut, and we’ll be all right.”

  “You shut your mouth, joe,” the younger said, dropping his shirt back over the pistol as if he meant it to be a dramatic gesture. “This not California. You not mess with Beni Boys now,” he sneered.

  While Morning was l
ooking puzzled, I got mad again that day. “You’re not too smart, are you?” I said. “That gun’s in a bad place. A good fast man could break your neck while you’re reaching for it. Your partner might get him. But that ain’t going to put your head back on.”

  “Hey, man,” Morning said, smiling, too, now. “Don’t scare the little man; he’ll blow his balls off going for that cannon.”

  The younger cop suddenly looked afraid, then bent into a slight crouch, but the older one said to him in Spanish, “That’s enough. Go to the car, now. I will talk now.” The younger one didn’t look happy, but he moved. As he reached the door, I said, “Si muchacho. Tu padre lo dice get out.” Tex-Mex, but he understood and started back, but the old one waved him off again.

  “You speak Spanish?” he said, turning to me.

  “No, man,” I said.

  He turned to Morning and said, “You boys shouldn’t talk to him like that. He’s really a nice kid. He’s just got a quick temper. He really likes Americans.” His English was very good, his voice quite naturally kind. “Now, if you…”

  “Don’t pull that buddy-buddy shit with us, man,” Morning said. “We’ve seen as many movies as you.”

  “Your friend is quite a wise ass,” the older cop said to me, no longer even faking kindness. “You should teach him to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Nobody likes a cop,” I said. “Particularly a crooked one.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, motioning us out the door. “Bring the cigarettes.”

  “Oh, the little shit told you they were cigarettes, huh?” Morning said as he picked up one suitcase. “Tell him hello from me, will you, when you pay him off. Tell him I’ll have another drop next Break, huh? A big one. A cement overcoat in the bay.”

  We followed the silent cop out the front and into an old jeep, gray and rusted, touched with a thousand dents. The younger cop sat behind the wheel, smoking a hastily lit cigarette, posing tough. He drove us through more crooked lanes for about ten minutes, stopped once at a call box to prepare the station for us, then took the longest way round to the station house. Morning and I carried in the suitcases and set them on a desk in an office shut away from the rest of the large wooden room by glass, then the cops took our names and our valuables, our belts, and Morning’s shoe laces, and afterward locked us in a wooden cage in the center of the room, across from the glass office. No place to sit, the floor, smeared with shit and vomit, too filthy to sit on, so we stood, waiting, saying nothing, watching the other occupant of the cage, a ragged drunk curled in a corner who never moved the whole time we were in the room, so still he might have been dead waiting to stink. We might have smoked, but the cops, the two who had brought us in and five or six others, were quickly demolishing our cigarettes in front of the booking desk at the other end of the room. The booking desk, like the one in the office, still bore the marks of whatever American military unit had used them before they were released for surplus. I shouted about the cigarettes, but one of the cops told me to smoke my toe, whatever that meant. If it was an insult, it didn’t work because it gave us a terrible case of nervous giggles, which relaxed us more than any cigarette. Morning shouted back to ask if it was okay if he smoked his thumb because his toe was empty, but the cops missed the joke.

  In about an hour a tall neat man in a barong tagalog came in the room, neatly combed hair, neat nails, and a dapper line of moustache. He nodded as he passed, as if we were casual acquaintances, spoke to the man at the desk, then walked in the straightest line into the glass office. Two different cops came, handcuffed Morning, then led him to the office. For five minutes there was a quiet businesslike talk, calm motions, thoughtful head movements, but Morning began, it looked like, saying no, no, no, in more fiery language. He stood up, and though I couldn’t hear him I could tell he said Bullshit in his best voice, allowing no argument. He was handcuffed again, not roughly, but forcefully, and taken outside. Then they came for me.

  “Sgt. Krummel, I believe it is,” he said, reaching out a hand as they removed the cuffs. “Capt. Mendoza, second in command of the Pasay City Secret Service.”

  I didn’t shake his hand. “Where did they take my friend?”

  “Just to an outside cell. He will be all right. I didn’t want him making any more, how should I say, bad blood with the two sergeants who brought you here.” His English was very neat too, but he sounded like an insurance man making a pitch for increased coverage, or a Bible salesman.

  “Just talk straight, huh? What’s your price? What’s it going to cost us to get out of this fairy tale?”

  “Oh, everyone is in such a hurry today. But it is late, and I, ah, shall we say, have a lady waiting. So to the point. If you had not made my two worthy sergeants quite so angry, we could arrange some sort of deal where I, ah, would purchase your cigarettes at a very small loss to you. You pay seven for them on Base, I would pay you seven. You would be out nothing but your profit and expenses, and be much the richer, as they say, for the experience. A very small loss, indeed,” he said, pausing to offer me a cigarette, which I didn’t take.

  “A small loss?” I asked, “or a shakedown?”

  “Oh, such a crude term. I would have expected more from an educated man,” he said, lighting his Chesterfield.

  “Educated?” I said.

  “Oh, yes, I know about you, Sgt. Krummel. I’ve known Teresita for many years. A lovely woman, as they say, yes, indeed. I’ve known about your business for some time. I also heard about your unfortunate encounter with Mr. Garcia this afternoon. He is a pig, but he could be dangerous, yes, indeed. As they say, I have my ear to many walls, yes, and you might call this a tax, a luxury tax. And the small loss you speak of so heavily would indeed be small compared to the price you would pay if you force me to call the U.S. Military Adjutant. You will surely face charges, be, as they say, busted, and perhaps spend some time in the stockade,” he said, finishing with a perfect smoke ring.

  “But, as I said,” he quickly continued, “that was before you two boys made my men so unhappy, so damned unhappy. Now, unfortunately, it will take only a gesture for you and your friend. You must walk out, forgetting you ever saw these cigarettes. You have reserve, surely, and it will take all of this to, as they say, grease the angry palms around here.” There wasn’t a trace of irony or of threat in his voice, but a slight note of sadness; the director of one company hearing about the director of another falling into a bad but not disastrous deal.

  “My friend said no deal, didn’t he?” I said.

  “Unfortunately, yes. He’s such an emotional creature.” Another perfect smoky circle.

  “Then no deal.”

  “Don’t be foolish. You made a mistake dealing with such a, as you might say, small tomatoes for a drop.” He rustled in his desk for a moment, then handed me a card, and offered me another cigarette. I took this one. “My address and telephone number. I also deal slightly in the market. When you make a run after now, call me. If you can boost your load to three hundred cartons a week, guaranteed, I can raise the price to eleven and a half. You will get rich; I will get richer. But you have to take this small loss. The younger man has, as you might say, political connections. A small loss. You’ll make it up in a month.”

  “Did you tell my friend this?” I asked, blowing a ragged ring of smoke between us.

  “Yes,” he said, standing. As he walked around the desk the crease in his trousers lay as precise as a ruler edge, the shine on his expensive shoes, hard and brilliant. “And other things. Other things.”

  “And he still said no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, no.”

  He sighed, then said, “You must be very good friends, indeed. Money can’t buy friendship, as they say.” He made out a receipt for the cigarettes, “But I think this is going to be an expensive friendship for you.” He reached for the phone. “Good luck. Think about what they say, Money can’t buy friendship.”

  “I guess not,” I said as I left, cuffed again. They walked
me out and lodged me in the cell with Morning.

  “He give you that get-rich-quick shit, too?” he asked out of the dark corner where he perched on a bamboo cot.

  “Sure,” I said, sitting on the other after the two cops removed the cuffs. “I told him it was a great idea. Told him to go ahead.”

  “Don’t try to shit me, Krummel. You told him to shove it right back up his crooked ass. Just like me.” His words seemed very close to my ear, but I still couldn’t see him; my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness. “Crooked mother.”

  “Where do you get off being so damned moral?” I asked.

  “What we’re doing is okay; what that bastard is doing is crooked. He’s supposed to be a cop. And so what if we do have to deal with shit, at least it knows it’s shit, like our lovely drop man, but that mother up there thinks he don’t stink. Where do I get off being so moral? Shit, man, where does he get off being so crooked. So I told him to shove it,” he said quickly, something, not fear, nor excitement, making his voice high and tired, almost a whine.

  “And why? Why not take the loss?” I asked.

  “Why? Because, man, I’ve been lied to, stolen from, and shit on for the last time. It’s too much. Nobody pushes me around any more, man,” he said.

  “And how do you know I didn’t take the loss?” I asked.

  “Nobody pushes you around either,” he said.

  “No, I guess not,” I said. “Guess not.”

  * * *

  The adjutant had us out in an hour. In another half hour we sat with a bottle of black-market Dewar’s — bought with my money because Morning discovered his loss — in the hotel. I was very numb, but tired too, and the Scotch seemed to run to my legs and weaken them, divide the very cells holding the muscles together. It seemed I should feel more, something more, anger, rage, shame, something about the loss of Teresita and my stripes in the same day, but for now I was just tired. The rage mounted behind Morning’s unfocused eyes, but I was just tired.