Double Play

by Robert B. Parker

  THERE WAS NO OTHER white person in sight when Robinson and Burke got out of the cab in St. Louis. The Royal Crest Hotel was a narrow three-story building with dingy red asphalt shingle siding and dirty windows. There was no doorman. The door was narrow and had a dirty glass panel. It opened into a pinched lobby, lit by a hanging bulb, with just room for a small reception desk behind a wire mesh partition. The place smelled bad. The desk man was a thick-bodied Negro with yellowish skin and a fat neck. He looked at them without speaking.

  “I called earlier,” Burke said. “About a room, for me and Mr. Robinson.”

  The desk man’s eyes shifted.

  “Didn’t tell me you was white,” the desk man said.

  “Forgot,” Burke said. “We need a double room.”

  “Colored only,” the desk man said.

  “I’m with him,” Burke said. “Pretend I’m a mulatto.”

  The desk man stared past them at the front door.

  “Colored only,” he said.

  Robinson took a five-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the counter in front of the little opening in the wire mesh.

  “We need the room,” he said.

  The desk man stared at it.

  “Ain’t even sure that it ain’t against the law to domicile colored and white together,” he said.

  A set of narrow stairs wound behind the reception desk. A colored man and woman came down the steps and saw Burke and stopped abruptly and stared at him. Then they quickly looked away, skirted him as widely as the small space permitted, and slipped out the front door.

  Burke took the .45 from under his coat and aimed it carefully at the desk man’s nose.

  “What’s the law on me shooting you in the fucking nose?” Burke said.

  The desk man shrank back a little before he froze still. Robinson put his hand on Burke’s arm and pushed the gun down.

  “Step outside a minute,” he said. “Let me talk to this man.”

  Burke put the gun away and went and stood outside the front door and looked at the street. It was hot, the way Guadalcanal had been, steaming and dense. The buildings came right to the sidewalk. Around their foundations weeds grew. Where there was paint it was faded and peeling. Four or five small black children in shabby clothes stood across the street from the hotel and stared at Burke. A window went up in the paintless gray building behind them and a woman’s voice shouted something Burke couldn’t hear. The kids turned and straggled away down the littered alley between the houses. A blue 1939 Plymouth sedan went by. It slowed as it drove past Burke. Dark faces stared out of its windows at him. An empty pint bottle was tossed out the window. The bottle broke and the car picked up speed and drove away. The door behind Burke opened.

  “Desk clerk decided to let us in,” Robinson said.

  They went in. The desk clerk wouldn’t look at Burke. They walked up the stairs behind the desk, two flights, to a room that looked out at the sagging porch on the back of a tenement. The stairs smelled as if someone had vomited. When Robinson opened the door, the heat came out like a physical thing. Robinson walked to the one window and pushed up. The window was stuck. He put a hand on each corner and spread his legs and bent his knees and heaved. The window didn’t budge. He looked at Burke.

  “Take one side,” he said.

  Burke stood on the left side and Robinson on the right.

  “On three,” Robinson said.

  He counted. At three they heaved, and the window went up. They looked at each other for a moment, and Robinson nodded very slightly. Each of them almost smiled. The air outside wasn’t much better.

  Box Score 3

  21.

  AFTER A NIGHT GAME at Crosley Field it took them a long time to find a cab. The white cabbies wouldn’t pick up a Negro, and the black cabbies were afraid to pick up a white man. Finally Burke went and stood in the doorway and Robinson flagged a cab driven by an aging gray-haired black man. Robinson got in.

  “Looking for a place to eat, open late,” Robinson said.

  “Sho’,” the cabbie said. “Take you over to Gaiter’s. Nice southern cookin’.”

  “Good,” Robinson said.

  He gestured at Burke.

  “Wait till my friend gets in,” Robinson said as Burke stepped out of the doorway and walked across the sidewalk.

  “Jesus Christ,” the cabbie said.

  “It’s okay,” Robinson said. “You know who I am.”

  “I do,” the cabbie said. “But I can’t take no white man.”

  “He can slouch way down,” Robinson said.

  “I get lynched carrying some ofay,” the cabbie said. “You want me gettin’ lynched.”

  Burke got into the car and sat beside Robinson in the back seat.

  “We can’t eat together anywhere that’s open now, less we go to the right part of town,” Robinson said. “We need to eat.”

  Burke took out a twenty-dollar bill, folded it in half the long way, and held it toward the cabbie. The cabbie eyed it. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. Then he took the bill, folded it again and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

  “White gennelman has to sit way down and back,” the cabbie said to Robinson.

  He didn’t look at Burke.

  Robinson said, “Thank you,” and the cab pulled away from the curb. The cabbie drove with both hands on the wheel, careful at cross streets, slowing at intersections. He let them off on a near empty street in front of a glass-fronted restaurant with a large Schlitz beer sign glowing in the window. The door was canopied in purple canvas and on the canvas in gold letters was GAITER’S FINE DINING.

  “I can’t be waiting for you,” the cabbie said.

  “Free country,” Burke said.

  Robinson and the cabbie looked at each other for a moment. Burke caught the look.

  “Sort of,” Burke said.

  The cab pulled away as soon as they were out. They went into the restaurant. It was smoky, crowded and noisy, with a lot of colored lights and a piano player near the bar. When Burke came in there was a pause in the hubbub. Burke had heard it before. The customers began to talk again as Burke and Robinson stood waiting to be seated. A balding Negro in a tuxedo, carrying menus under his arm, stared at Burke for a moment, then looked at Robinson, and, after another moment, back at Burke.

  Then he said, “This way please,” and led them toward a table in the back. As they moved through the restaurant the piano player began to play “White Christmas.” Four young men sitting together nearby glared at Burke. There was challenge in the glare. Burke ignored them.

  “The ‘White Christmas’ business was for you,” Robinson said.

  “I sort of guessed that,” Burke said.

  “Young bucks over there,” Robinson nodded toward them, “might work themselves up enough to make some trouble.”

  Burke shrugged and picked up his menu.

  “What’s good here,” he said.

  “You think I know the food in every Negro restaurant in America?” Robinson said.

  “Figured there might be some sort of natural rhythm to it,” Burke said.

  Robinson nodded. For a moment his blue-black face relaxed into a short smile.

  “I’m going to have the meat loaf,” Robinson said. “Side of macaroni and cheese.”

  “Sounds good,” Burke said.

  While they waited for their food, Burke had a Vat 69 on the rocks. Robinson had a Coke. The four young men at the far table continued to drink Four Roses and ginger ale, and look at Burke.

  “This the way it always is?” Burke said.

  “Is what the way it always is?” Robinson said.

  “Trouble getting a cab, trouble finding a place to eat, trouble getting a hotel room?”

  “That’s the way it always is,” Robinson said.

  “Makes everything hard,” Burke said.

  “You learnin’,” Robinson said.

  His voice seemed to darken into a Negro sound as he talked.

  “Got to be c
areful,” Robinson said. “ ’Bout everything. Be careful who you look at, who you talk to, what you say, where you sit, where you walk, where you live, where you travel. Can’t depend on cops. Finding a bathroom is a problem. Buying cigarettes. Riding in an elevator. Getting a drink of water.”

  One of the black men at the table near them called over to Burke, “Hey, white boy.”

  Burke turned and looked at him without expression. He was a tall man with yellow-brown skin and longish hair combed straight back and glistening with pomade.

  “That’s right, Sow Belly, I talking to you.”

  Still looking at the pomaded Negro, Burke said to Robinson, “If there’s trouble we leave.”

  Robinson said, “I know.”

  The Negro man continued.

  “Who that you with? You with your house nigger? You think that make it all right?”

  Burke’s hands rested motionless on the table. His face was blank. The Negro stood suddenly and walked to the table.

  “You talk?” he said. “Or you too good to talk with a nigger.”

  “Don’t make a mistake,” Burke said to him softly.

  “Mistake,” the man said. “Shit.”

  He paused suddenly and looked at Robinson again. Robinson nodded his head at him.

  “You . . .” the man said.

  Robinson nodded again. At the other table the man’s three companions were staring now at Robinson.

  “Mutha fuck,” the man said.

  He looked at Burke.

  “You with him?” he said.

  “I am,” Burke said.

  The man looked at Robinson.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  Robinson smiled.

  “Ah’m sorry to have bothered you,” the man said.

  “It’s all right,” Robinson said. “Enjoy your dinner.”

  “Yes. You bet. I . . . Good luck, Jackie.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man went back to his table. Everyone in the room turned and looked at Robinson. In a moment a waitress brought their food.

  “Everybody in the room now knows who you are,” Burke said as he ate.

  “Yes.”

  “That bother you?” Burke said.

  “Yes.”

  After dinner Burke and Robinson stood on the garish street. A brindled dog with one ear down limped past them. Several cabs passed them without slowing.

  “All the cabbies are Negro,” Robinson said, “in this part of town. They won’t pick us up because of you.”

  “And if we walk ten or twelve blocks to a white neighborhood?” Burke said.

  “The white cabbies won’t pick us up because of me.”

  They stood silently for a moment watching the yellow dog disappear into an alley.

  “How far you figure it is to walk to the hotel?” Burke said.

  “ ’Bout an hour and a half,” Robinson said. “ ’Course you got to carry that big forty-five.”

  “I’ve walked further than that,” Burke said, “carrying more.”

  “Enlisted?” Robinson said, as they headed downtown under the disinterested streetlights.

  “Yeah,” Burke said. “You?”

  “Commissioned.”

  “You want to call cadence?” Burke said.

  “You start,” Robinson said.

  In the uncertain light, on the exhausted street, he might have been smiling.

  Jody was there when you left.

  You’re right.

  Your baby was there when you left.

  You’re right.

  But you ain’t there ’cause you left.

  You’re right. . . .

  Box Score 4

  22.

  IN BOSTON TO play the Braves, Robinson was able to stay at the Hotel Kenmore with the rest of the team. Burke stayed with him. There was a night game Friday and when they got back to the hotel, someone had slipped a letter under the door addressed to Jackie Robinson. Robinson opened it and read it, holding the envelope in his left hand, and the letter in his right, his dark eyes moving without expression over the page. When he got through he read it again. After the second reading, he handed the letter to Burke. It was handwritten in lavender ink, in a carefully rounded Palmer method hand.

  Dear Jackie,

  I hope you don’t mind if I call you Jackie, but Mr. Robinson sounds so odd for a Negro. Don’t get me wrong, I am crazy about you. I will see you play tonight at the game, and I’m going to see you play tomorrow afternoon. I love to watch you. I have tickets to all the Dodger games in Boston this year. I’m dying to meet you. It’s a day game tomorrow and maybe afterwards I could come to your room and introduce myself. I just know you’d be so gorgeous close up. You can call me at CO7-3965. I look forward to hearing from you. I’ve enclosed a recent photograph of myself.

  Affectionately,

  It was signed Millicent, and both i’s were dotted with a circle.

  “Picture?” Burke said.

  Robinson took a black-and-white snapshot out of the envelope and looked at it and handed it to Burke. It was a big-breasted blond woman in a one-piece bathing suit, standing on her toes at the beach, with her chin tilted up and both hands behind her head.

  “White,” Burke said.

  “Blond white,” Robinson said.

  Burke put the picture down on the bureau and sat on one of the twin beds. Robinson stood at the window, looking out at the air shaft. Burke swung his feet up on the bed, propped the pillows a little and lay back with his hands folded on his chest.

  “We got three possibilities here,” Burke said. “One, she’s a crazed fan and she wants your autograph. Two, she’s part of a setup to catch you in a compromising situation with a white woman. Three, she’s some kind of sex bomb with a thing for colored guys.”

  “She ain’t just a crazed fan,” Robinson said.

  “So we look at possibilities two and three,” Burke said.

  “Three,” Robinson said.

  “Because?” Burke said.

  Robinson turned from the window and sat on the other twin bed across from Burke. He leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs and his hands clasped.

  “There’s women like that,” Robinson said.

  “The legend of the large black dick,” Burke said.

  Robinson shrugged.

  “That might be part of it,” Robinson said, “but it’s more than that. Women like that want you to be crude. They don’t want no high-toned college Negro. They want a savage.”

  Burke thought about Lauren.

  “Why?” he said.

  “I look like Sigmund Freud to you?” Robinson said.

  “Not without a beard,” Burke said. “The way some girls are crazy for horses? You know? Get to control a big powerful thing between their legs?”

  “Don’t know about horses,” Robinson said. “But I know there’s a certain kind of white woman that wants to do it with a big crude nigger and have him swear and talk dirty and shove her down and tear off her clothes.”

  “And if the big crude nigger is also the most famous nigger in America?” Burke said.

  “So much the better,” Robinson said.

  “It could still be a setup,” Burke said.

  Robinson nodded.

  “Either way,” Burke said. “I got to keep her away from you.”

  “You’re no fun at all,” Robinson said.

  23.

  SMOKING, Burke leaned on a lamppost in Kenmore Square across the sidewalk from the entrance to the hotel. He had the snapshot of Millicent. Behind him the weekend traffic, some of it from the recent ball game, moved inbound past him on Commonwealth Avenue. People came in and out of the hotel. The doorman hailed cabs, and opened doors, hustled bags, and pocketed fifty-cent tips. At quarter to seven Millicent got out of a cab wearing a sleeveless white sundress and a big straw hat, and carrying a big purse that matched the hat. The doorman jumped to hold the cab door, and scurried to open the hotel door as Millicent strode past him on very h
igh heels. Burke stayed put until the cab she’d come in pulled away. He looked carefully around the square. He saw no one he recognized, no one who showed an interest in Millicent or where she was going. Burke snapped his cigarette butt into the gutter, and walked into the hotel.

  Millicent was at the front desk. She took a big red envelope out of her purse and handed it to the desk clerk. He looked at it and nodded and put it under the counter. Millicent went to a chair in the lobby near the elevators and sat down, and showed a flash of thigh above her stockings as she crossed her legs. Burke admired the thigh. He knew she’d sit until the bellhop went past her with the red envelope. Then she’d follow him to Robinson’s room. He looked around the lobby. No one was paying any attention to Millicent that wouldn’t be explained by the amount of knee she was showing as she sat and waited. No one was looking at him, either.

  Burke almost smiled. Meet you there, he said silently and took the next elevator to the fifth floor. The room he shared with Robinson was empty. Burke poured himself a drink from a bottle of Vat 69 he’d brought with him. Then he closed the blinds, turned off the lights, put the .45 on the reading table by his elbow and sat in the one chair. He sipped his scotch and waited. In thirteen very slow minutes there was a knock on the door.

  Burke said, “Yeah?”

  “Message for Mr. Robinson.”

  Burke stood, put his drink down, picked up the .45 and answered the door, keeping the .45 out of sight.

  “Mr. Robinson?”

  “Sure,” Burke said.

  He gave the bellhop a quarter and closed the door. He took the red envelope to the chair, put down the gun and opened the envelope. He picked up his drink and sipped it. There was no message in the envelope, only another snapshot. This one in the same bathing suit, back to the camera in her tight suit, looking awkwardly at the camera over her left shoulder. Burke recognized the Betty Grable pinup pose and smiled a little. Then he put the photo down beside the gun and drank a little scotch and waited some more. After another six minutes of slow time there was a soft knock on the door. Put down the drink. Pick up the gun. Walk to the door. Burke stood behind the door, out of sight when he opened it.