by Ted Lewis
“Sure you are, nigger,” I say to him.
Styles grins at me.
“Cool down,” he says. “Ain’t nothing like that going to get under my skin, you must know that.”
He unfolds a napkin, tucks it in the collar of his shirt and says, “But on the other hand, if you want to talk to me, that’d be nice but after I’ve eaten and without the kid.”
“You’re sure you can spare the time?” Murdock asks him.
“Leave it,” I say to Murdock. “Let him have his moment. Let’s eat; I’d rather not talk to him on an empty stomach.”
Styles grins again. “We’ll talk outside, okay?” he says. “We’ll sit and talk and my kid can watch the animals.”
Murdock begins to step forward but I put my hand on his arm saying, “I’m hungry. Let’s go and get a tray.”
Styles’s kid comes back and I turn away from the table. Murdock follows me and we join the line at the counter.
“That black bastard,” Murdock mutters. “We should smash his teeth in.”
“We don’t have to do that, at least not yet,” I tell him. “It’s good he should think he can push us around. If he thinks we’re hicks, it’s in our favor not his.” We fill our trays and go and sit at a table not too far away from where Styles is.
While we’re eating Murdock says, “I wonder what the kid thinks his old man does for bread?”
“Maybe he thinks he’s in civil rights,” I tell him.
After that Murdock and I finish our lunch in silence, and occasionally I look over at Styles and his kid. Styles is grinning away and joking making the kid giggle all the time, and never once does Styles look over in our direction, only at the end of their meal as if to tell us he’s ready to give us a sign. Then he gets up, takes his kid by the hand and weaves his way through the tables toward the exit, Styles all relaxed and slow-moving, the kid all tense with the occasion of holding his daddy’s hand.
Murdock finishes the remains of his coffee and we both get up and follow Styles across the restaurant out into the sunlight. We stand at the top of the restaurant steps and watch as he takes his kid over to the bench opposite the monkey house. Styles takes some money out of his pocket, gives it to the kid and sends him off. After that Styles sits down on the bench and takes out a pack of cigarettes. Murdock and I go down the steps over to the bench, and when we get there Murdock sits down on one side of Styles and I sit down on the other. Styles has left his pack of cigarettes lying on the bench seat next to him so I pick up the pack, take out a cigarette and put the pack down again.
“What about one for your buddy?” Styles says.
“I don’t care for that brand,” Murdock says.
“Okay,” Styles says. “So let’s talk. I mean, you do want to talk to me?”
“We’ve been told to,” I tell him. “There’s a difference.”
“Sure,” Styles says.
I light my cigarette.
“You’ve got us all wrong,” I say to him. “I mean, you seem to be assuming that we’ve come down here to bust you, come what may. I mean, you must realize, in our little town, a guy like you is one hell of a celebrity. I mean, you’ve really got some fan club down at the department, the way you still happen to be walking around after all the action you’ve been responsible for. Jesus, it almost got that we should draw lots as to who should come and talk to you but we were lucky—the chief gave us the detail. And you’ve got to admit that your arrival has caused an awful lot of speculation as to why you’re in this particular town because when you pay a visit, there’s usually a reason, so they ain’t no use, Massuh, in playing it like Stepin Fetchit, is there?”
For the first time Styles lets his grin slip a little, but he fights that, and then he says, “I guess you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t worry too much. They got to give you guys something to do, after all.”
“That’s right,” I tell him. “Hell, if you weren’t here, Murdock and me’d probably be out busting niggers and that gets to be a bore—you know how they’re no fun downtown; they crack too early, they holler much too soon.”
“I guess so,” Styles says.
“So all we wanted to do, was to see you, see what you had to say about why you were here. But now we don’t have to even go that far. It’s all clear now. You just came to town to see your brat. Now we can go back to the department and tell them that and get back to our real work.”
Styles throws his cigarette away.
“But I’ll tell you,” he says. “If, while I’m here, I get anybody wants to throw a little work my way, as you’ve been regular with me, you give me your number, okay? Then I can let you know what I may get into; that way everybody’d be helping everybody else like members of the Great Society should.”
“You do that,” I tell him.
“There’s another thing I should tell you,” he says. “I’m humping a white whore—she’s staying with me at the hotel. Now she ain’t much but she passes the time, and there’s one thing about that situation; that’s if my ex-old lady gets to know about that, she may try and put the blocks on me spending my time with Pauly. What I’d like to say regarding that is that legally there isn’t nothing I can do. But I got a good friend in this town, and people I’ve worked for in the past wouldn’t like it too much if he let me be pushed around and he knows that, so in the end it’d be better for you guys if you let me alone in that respect.”
“Thanks for letting us know about that,” I say to him. “Otherwise we’d never have figured it out.”
“I know,” Styles says. “I kind of guessed figuring couldn’t have been your strong point.”
I stand up. “Well,” I say to him, “it’s been nice talking to you, Mr. Styles. Enjoy your stay while you’re here. We have a nice little city and make sure you make use of all the facilities we have. I’m sure they’ll enhance your stay.”
Murdock gets up too and without saying anything else I begin to walk away from the bench with Murdock following after me.
Murdock eventually falls in next to me and says, “If there’s anything I can’t stand it’s an uppity nigger.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But he’s only going to be uppity for so long because as sure as Christ I’m going to have that bastard, and it’s going to be all the sweeter to see him fall from his elevated position.”
“You changed your mind?” Murdock says.
“No,” I tell him. “I just want him, that’s all.”
“Nothing personal, naturally,” Murdock says.
I stop and face Murdock and say to him, “Listen, I don’t want your crap as well. I have enough of that without yours. We work together but there’s nothing in the manual that says I have to take your crap when I don’t want to. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” Murdock shrugs, and follows me across the warm gravel to the zoo exit.
Florian’s place is a half hour’s drive out of the city off the freeway up in the hills at the end of a three-mile private road.
The guys at the gate phone through to the house and then they open up and Murdock rolls the car up the drive and parks it between the circular fountain and the colonnaded front.
We get out and before our feet hit the gravel two of Florian’s helpers are strolling down the steps to welcome us and although they know we’re not trouble they go through their routine just to remind us of where we are. As we climb the steps the helpers follow us up. The flunky is standing there holding the door open for us and we go through but the helpers stay outside at the top of the steps.
“Where the carpet starts, they stop,” Murdock comments.
In the big hall with the sweeping staircase, Ray Hammett is waiting for us. Hammett is the guy that listens to what Florian has to say and then goes and relays the news to whoever Florian has been talking about. Hammett looks like a P.R. man and wears a P.R. man’s s
mile as he greets us.
“Mr. Florian is in the library,” Hammett says, indicating the paneled doors on our right, but instead of stepping aside he passes in front of us, opens the double doors and walks through then he stands to one side so that Murdock and me can go in.
Florian is standing in the classic pose in front of the fireplace, dressed in lounging pajamas, wrapped in a silk dressing gown, a martini in the fingers of his classically crooked right arm. But for all the studied composure, Florian doesn’t look quite himself; there’s just the hint of a crack in the smoothly massaged exterior, and the fact that he opens the batting is equally out of character.
“I know why you’re here,” he says. “Ray, give them a drink and then clear out.”
“Yes, Mr. Florian,” Hammett says, and walks over to an antique cabinet that holds all the stuff. “What can I get you gentlemen?” We tell him and he gets it for us then he goes out. “Sit down,” Florian says to us, so we sit down.
“I just made some calls,” he says, “and I’m waiting for a few people to call back, but those calls won’t really make any difference because I’ve had a conversation with someone who tells me that there is no way Styles is here on official business on behalf of the Organization, that I can tell you.”
“That’s why you have two or three extra guys on the gate is it?” I say to him.
“Listen,” Florian says, “I consider that kind of crack to be in poor taste, you know? In fact...”
“Calm down,” I tell him. “Your circulation can do without that kind of excitement. So you get the word and the word is that Styles is here as a bonafide citizen of this great county. And did you get another word to tell us what to do about it?”
Florian takes a silver cigar case from the pocket of his dressing gown.
“Well,” he says, taking a cheroot from the case, “look at it this way: he’s a highly valued asset to the Organization, even though he’s freelance, and as there’s no reason for any hassle, then...”
Florian spreads his arms slightly and then sticks the cheroot in his mouth and lights it.
“I take it you haven’t talked to Draper,” I say to Florian.
“Oh, sure,” he says. “I talked to him a couple of minutes before you came up here, and he asked for you to call him after you talked to me.”
Murdock and me look nowhere in particular and it seems the only sound in the room is the smoke as it issues from Florian’s lips. Then Murdock takes a sip of his drink and the sound the ice makes in his glass is like a sledgehammer. Then there is some more silence and after a while I say to Florian, “Well, I guess that more or less wraps the whole thing up.”
“I guess it does,” Florian says. “I’m glad you dropped by before you got into something that’d do nobody any good.”
“That’s right,” I tell him. I put my drink down and stand up and say to Murdock, “Come on George. Let’s get back to looking for the nut.”
Murdock gets up, too, and Florian says, “Don’t forget what I said about if I can do anything for you guys in regard to that business.”
“We’ll do that,” I tell him.
“Fine,” Florian says.
Then we go out of the library, out of the house and get into the car and drive to the gate. Florian’s guys let us off the estate and then after the gate has closed behind us Murdock says, “Now ain’t that peaches?”
I don’t say anything.
“Draper changes his mind just like that or has it changed for him,” Murdock goes on.
“It was changed for him,” I say.
“Sure it was,” Murdock says. “But what the Christ is happening? This morning Draper’s shitting in his pants. Styles could bring him a whole bag of grief; now he’s doing what Florian’s told him to do? I mean, that still leaves him with the shit in his pants. Assuming, I mean, anything happens and Styles makes it happen.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“So what do you think?” Murdock asks me. “What do you think now?”
I shake my head.
“I mean it’s got to be a possibility. You got to see that now.”
“Okay, you tell me, if you’re right, what it’d mean. It’d mean Florian would know that was the case; he’d know the note from the nut was a blind to get everybody running in all directions; he’d know what Styles walking about in broad daylight would throw up then he comes back and checks and sets our minds at rest and we lay off. All very nice except Draper didn’t know, then he’s told, then he changes his tune.”
“You remember Mutt and Jeff?” Murdock says.
“Sure,” I tell him.
“So maybe Florian and Draper are playing that one. We’re bound to come across Styles. Maybe Draper knows all the time, but first he convinces us how tight-assed this town’s security is going to be because of the phony note. He has Bolan typing up everything in Scotch tape, and he has us crawling on our bellies after a nonexistent nut, and while we’re doing that we’re shown Styles; Pete Foley shows us Styles...”
“Foley could have been insurance just in case us dumb cops were likely to miss him.”
“Right, and like I say, Draper gives us his Oscar-winning performance about how he ain’t going to have the world’s greatest hit man in town until your brother’s out of it, and then the switcheroo. We’re supposed to believe Florian’s talked to him and told him not to be such a farm boy from Georgia and get back to flushing out the nut, and so we leave Styles alone and go back to crawling around after someone who doesn’t exist. They know we’ll do that because we always accept what we’re told from those sources, and they’re chuckling to each other right up until Styles squeezes the trigger.”
“You’re great at figuring,” I tell him. “In fact, it’s a great surprise to me you’re still working at my lowly level, but there’s just one thing that worries me. I mean, I’m sure in your great wisdom you’ve figured it out like all the rest; it’s just that you overlooked explaining it to me.”
“That being?”
“That being that they go to the trouble of setting this up the way they’ve done it and it happens Styles whacks my brother. But you and I know, don’t we. We’ve been told to get off Styles’s back. So the minute Styles makes his hit what’s to stop us laying it on everybody that Draper and Florian warned us off the whole deal?”
“I don’t know,” Murdock says.
“Oh, you don’t know?” I say to him.
“Listen maybe they’ve got all sorts of contingency plans. Christ, it’d be easy for Florian to set us up in some kind of poignant situation where we were taken out while making an arrest—only it was Florian’s guys knocking over the liquor store. He could have that done tomorrow, today even.”
“Sure, so why all the double shuffles?”
Murdock sighs and lights a cigarette, then he sighs again and smoke fills the interior of the car.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know. All I know is it stinks and it stinks higher than Snow Mountain.”
“Sure it stinks,” I tell him. “I never said it didn’t stink. I mean one of the things that stinks most of all is why go to all the trouble. Sure, Styles is the best but he didn’t have to come and stay wide open at the Chandler with his girlfriend. I know he likes publicity but that kind of publicity connected with a nominee wouldn’t help if he got caught.”
“Maybe he’s sure he won’t get caught.”
“He’s no crazy nigger full of Horse.”
“That he ain’t.”
Murdock takes a left and then another and stops outside a bar called Swinging London. Of course it’s topless and of course its decor is America’s idea of what the British Travel Association wants America to think of Britain, but it’s the first bar we’ve hit since we’ve left Florian’s so Murdock stops the car and we go in. A girl with tits like football
s comes to our booth, takes our orders and goes off again. We sit in silence until the drinks come back and after the girl’s gone away Murdock says, “Okay, so I’m talking crap. After all the garbage we’ve been given today, I’m talking crap. But you don’t talk crap. You’re a smart-ass. So you tell me what you think.”
“George,” I tell him, “I don’t think a thing. Not one thing. I’m pissed off with the speculation you’ve been giving me since we left Florian’s. But I’ll tell you one thing and it’s for sure. Draper’s told me what to do for the last time. Florian’s told me what to do for the last time, too. As far as I’m concerned, from now on, they’re down the can. Now whether there’s a nut in town or there isn’t, I don’t give a shit. If there is, Bolan will block him off even if it’s at the last minute. But with or without you, there’s one thing I’m going to do, and that is run that nigger out of town, and Draper and Florian can throw the Green Berets and John Wayne and George Foreman or whoever the hell else at me, but that’s what I’m going to do. And after I’ve done that they can rethink all sorts of things to do with themselves and with me and then they can drop dead.”
Murdock is silent for a moment or two.
“I guess I’m not surprised. I mean, if you won’t bother going after some guy who might be going to take out your brother, you may as well pass the time getting even with a jig who’s screwing a piece of ass you want for yourself.”
Now it’s my turn to be silent. Murdock lights a cigarette and waves at the waitress we got before and orders two more of the same. While they’re being brought I say to Murdock, “You’re full of wise ideas these days, George, only some of them aren’t too wise, know what I mean?” George just shrugs.
