A Conversation with the Mann

by John Ridley

  “I know.”

  “The thing you're asking—”

  “What I'm asking-—”

  “You want things explained to this guy. Explained so they don't need explainin' again.”

  “I want him off my back.”

  A bird chose that moment to give a little whistle. Up the block I could hear some kids playing. Someone started a car. For a split second I had become hypersensitive to the whole world. Nothing escaped me.

  Frank asked: “This guy, you know where to find him?”

  I told Frank yes, told him Dighton's name and where he was staying, the Waldorf, courtesy of me.

  Frank didn't follow that up with anything, didn't say he was going to help me or that he wasn't. We did talk on some, but completely off the subject and about nothing in particular. Movies. Frank S. What a bastard Kennedy was for making his no-good crumb of a headline-grabbing kid brother the AG.

  Finally, from Frank: “Well, good of you to visit, Jackie.” He said it without moving an inch from where he sat. I would be finding my own way out.

  I thanked Frank for his time and asked that he give my good-bye to his wife. I started to go. As I made my way:

  “Jackie …”

  I turned back.

  “You really don't look so good. You should take a vacation, get out of town for a week.”

  “I'm working the Copa. I don't think I ca—”

  “You need to get out of town for a week.”

  Frank may have been mostly out of the life, but, by nature, his suggestions carried the weight of a command. Truth was, I could use a break. Things could wait. The clubs weren't going anywhere. I had a feeling Dighton wasn't going anywhere. Me, I sure wasn't going anywhere.

  I used the train ride back to figure on where I should be getting myself to.

  I DECIDED TO GET MYSELF TO HAWAII. I had never been, and, therefore, unlike most every other state in America, it held no memories for me.

  The first thing I noticed changing planes in Honolulu was the air. Never in my life had I ever smelled anything so clean. Even in out-of-the-way burgs—Minneapolis, Lincoln—the air was good, but not like this. Hawaiian air was so sweet it was fragrant, a blend of tropical flowers, the ocean, rain, and sun. It was like a message to the senses: Forget the rest of the world. You're somewhere else now.

  I took a hopper over to Maui, where I was going to make my stay for five days.

  I dug Maui. Besides being beautiful and good-smelling and all that, I dug Maui because it was underdeveloped, quiet, and short on people. What people there were, the locals, kamaainas they called each other, were nothing but warm and friendly. Cousins you didn't know you had. They didn't care who you were. They didn't care what color you were. Treat them decent, they treated you decent right back.

  Forget the rest of the world. You're somewhere else now.

  By day number two, I was like Charlie Local, doing everything aloha-style: going barefoot, relaxing instead of rushing around. Not worrying. How are you going to worry when the sun's up, the breeze is cool? How are you going to have any concerns when your only concern is resting in the shade versus on the beach?

  On the beach.

  I was sitting out on the beach one evening, sitting, just watching the sun go down for no other reason than that's what I felt like doing just then, when I caught a man walking in my direction from up the shore. Walking. Taking his time. Not in any hurry. He was an Asian fellow, but veiy dark in skin. Very tan, as if he'd spent the last bunch of years doing nothing but walking along one beach or another. When he came upon me, he stood for a bit, looking out into the ocean, then he took up a seat in the sand. Not too close to me, but not so far off he wasn't trying to be in my presence.

  He said to me: “Howzit?”

  “Good,” I said back.

  He kept looking out at the water, looking at the falling sun bouncing off the Pacific. In a real low voice, like he didn't want to disturb nature's work: “Dat's sumtin', yah, bruddah?” His accent was stricdy local. Pidgin.

  “It's something,” I agreed. “I could stare at that all day. Makes me feel like … you know, makes me feel not everything in the world is all that bad.”

  The man asked where I was from. I told him New York but that I traveled a lot. He wanted to know if I'd ever been to California, and I told him that I had.

  Then he told me he used to live in California. Los Angeles. He had moved his family there decades ago, opened a small business— an antique shop—that had done fairly well. He never would have gotten rich off of it, he said, but they were nowhere near starving.

  Then the war broke out.

  He and his family were herded up with the rest of the Japanese-Americans, his business sold off for pennies on the dollar. They got shipped off to an internment camp—war relocation center, it was euphemized—in Manzanar. They were interned—relocated—no matter that his ancestors weren't strictly Japanese. They were from Okinawa. The government didn't know the difference. Didn't know, didn't care. And no matter that their own government locked them up, the man's two sons—one named Jeff, the other Tony—signed up for military service soon as they could to prove to every Jap hater out there that Japanese-Americans were good Americans. They fought with the 442nd Infantry in Europe—the Nisei Brigade.

  Late in 1944, the man told me, he got a telegram at Manzanar telling him Tony had been KIA. Less than a week later he got another telegram. Jeff.

  War over, the man was allowed to return to Los Angeles. There was nothing left there for him anymore, and he had no money to start over. He worked odd jobs, saved what he could, returned with what remained of his family to Hawaii. These days he worked as a handyman. He said he would never get rich doing it, but then, he added, he wasn't starving either.

  At the horizon, the sun went down below the water, was doused.

  The man picked himself up from the sand. “Take 'er easy, brud-dah.” He walked on down the beach.

  I stayed in Hawaii three more days. I didn't enjoy it as much.

  I RETURNED TO NEW YORK. The city was much the same as I'd left it, only now camouflaged with the unknown. I didn't know if— when—Dighton was going to come around sweating me for more cash. I didn't know if Frank had seen his way to making a call, arranging for someone to talk to my tormenting hick. Talk to him and talk to him until he got his pale behind back below the Mason/ Dixon, never to come sniffing around for my green again.

  So not knowing anything about anything, I tried to get on with the daily business of Jackie Mann, which I accomplished poorly at best. I couldn't ignore the redneck monkey on my back. So many times I'd reach for the phone to dial up Dighton, find out if he'd been paid a visit, if he'd gotten a message, but each time I stopped myself. If he was still around, what was the point of talking to him, reminding him that Jackie Mann, the human bank, was present and cash-ready anytime he needed? I was paralyzed. I couldn't move and wouldn't know which way to anyhow. All there was to do was sit and wait and hope that every day without hearing from Dighton would bring me one day closer to the time when I would never hear from him again.

  I lived that way minute by minute.

  There was a morning, routine like every morning: waking up too early from a bad night's sleep. Trying to write new bits but having no heart for it. Trying to watch television but having no stomach for it. An errant copy of The Times at my door the only part of my day that strayed from monotony.

  I had to get out. I had to go into the city and lose myself. I had to go and shop and buy and spend money and slather myself with shiny items to distract me from my preoccupations.

  Useless.

  Everything I did seemed useless for getting me beyond …

  Something wasn't right. Besides everything else that was wrong, something was shrewing at the flesh of my mind, dull and slow, but persistentiy demanding my attention. Something …

  The Times at my door. Why was The Times at my door? I wasn't a subscriber. So why was the paper … It wasn't. It wasn't the who
le paper …

  My head whipped, looked for a newsstand. Found one. Went for it. Grabbed a Times, ignored the yelling newsy as I tore threw it looking … looking …

  It wasn't the whole paper at my door, it was only—

  I threw cash at the newsy, a wad of it, shut him up.

  The Metro section: The MTA thinking about a fare hike. A man attacked by rats in the park. Suicide in Midtown. The borough president promising to devote a street crew to just fixing potholes. A string of muggings has ritzy Park Ave. all jittery. The library was opening—

  The paper crunched. An involuntary jerk—realization delayed—crumbled it in my hands. I opened the paper again just ahead of a panic that was racing me down. The suicide in Mid-town. My eyes bounced all over the article, unable to read it in a steady fashion: the Waldorf-Astoria. Tourist. Jumped. Miami man. Dighton Spooner.

  The paper got crumbled up again; I strangled it against my body as I clutched at myself trying to hold in a sickness that was eating me from the inside out.

  The newsy, not yelling at me now. Now he was asking me if I was all right. People touching me, grabbing at me: “You okay, mister?” “Mister, you need help?” A thousand shrill voices, ice picks to my head. I swung and swatted at them. I flailed my way free of the murmuring. I clawed through the avenue foot traffic madman-style.

  A phone booth.

  I stumbled into a phone booth. Shut the door. Shut them out. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't… I had to talk myself calm, had to talk myself into believing that maybe … that probably it was a suicide. Here was this Dighton cat, strictly a hick from Backwatersville, gets the heave by the Mrs., no prospects in the big city and the only dough he's got is out of my pocket. Sprinkle a little booze on top of all that, and it's a recipe for taking a fast trip to the sidewalk.

  Wasn't it?

  It was. I told myself it was.

  I spent three minutes on the floor of a phone booth telling myself it was.

  I didn't buy it.

  One more minute of sitting.

  I hauled myself up, got a coin from my pocket, and slotted it.

  I dialed.

  Bobbie answered. I gave her some hello, how are you, how's the house jazz, then fast as I could got around to asking if Frank was home. She told me he was and went off to get him.

  Seemed like a year before he picked up the phone.

  “Frank …”

  “Jackie, what's do—”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “What?”

  “Did you have some guys go over there and—”

  “You fuckin' crazy?” His wheeze sounding like a bellows. “You out of your goddamn mind! ”

  Was I? I must've been to be talking to a man like Frank—a man like Frank, whose line could very possibly be cop- or FBI-tapped— about such things as murder.

  I said for whatever ears might be listening: “I'm … I'm kidding around, Frank. I'm a comedian. I'm just… I'm a ladder.”

  “You had a problem.”

  “What's tha—”

  “You had a problem, didn't you?”

  “Yeah, I … I had one.”

  “Well, you ain't got one no more. That's what you wanted, you dumb-jig bastard. That's what you got. And don't be fuckin' callin' me up no more. Never! You goddamn—”

  The exclamation was the slam of Frank's phone in my ear.

  My phone just sort of fell out of my hand. In my head, Frank's words kept thrashing around. “That's what you wanted.”

  It's not what I wanted. I wanted Frank to send out a couple of guidos, I wanted them to take that bastard Dighton by the scruff of the neck, slap him around, slap him smart. Let him know—make him believe—that if he ever opened his mouth regarding what had happened on a back road in Florida, permanent trouble is what he'd get, but I didn't want … I didn't want…

  I wanted this.

  I did. I could claim things any way I pleased—dial up Frank and scream my innocence—but inside myself, within the dark that I owned, I knew the truth. I knew the kind of man Frank was. I knew with one phone call he could push the button that would pull a trigger. When I went to him with my vague self—I want you to talk to him, I want you to explain things to him—what was that but guinea-speak for rough business. An unpleasant chore. What was that but saying without saying “Make him dead for me.”

  And should that surprise me any? Really, when I thought about it, should I be so shocked at what I'd done? Years prior I had killed a man. An accident. I hadn't meant to. But I had taken a pipe to his head. I had killed him to protect myself. Was this any different? A guy shows up out of my past, wanting from me, and to get what he wants he would tear down everything I'd built up over the years. Every single thing. What would that return me to? Being some poor black man with no prospects, no chances, right back on the unforgiving streets of Harlem? Sowas what I did now any different than what I'd done then? Wasn't it just protecting me one more time?

  Yes.

  At that moment I became fully aware of myself, that for the things I wanted, if it came to it, if it had to … if I had to, I could kill.

  That was not the queer part. Honest: Back to the wall, knife at your throat, who wouldn't take a life in the name of self-preservation?

  The queer part: I was fine with the concept. My breathing went regular. My heart slowed up. The knowledge of things, it didn't frighten me. I wasn't ill to my gut or scared of myself anymore. I felt very liberated in the knowledge of that which I could do.

  LONGCHAMPS WAS ALL ABOUT FOOD. Hearty food. House-cut steak and potatoes heaped up high on your plate. Longchamps was a restaurant on Madison and Fifty-ninth where the tony people went to chow down and get greasy. Longchamps was where I invited Sid for some dinner. I had the New York strip, and Sid went back and forth on the prime rib. I encouraged him to go all out. It was my treat. He got the T-bone. Through our salads we talked some about a picture we'd both seen, whether or not we'd ever get to the moon, how much we hated bossa nova. We both talked a lot, desperate to fill what we sensed would otherwise be unnaturally dead air.

  Done with his salad, Sid pushed his plate away. He took a look all around the joint, said: “Nice restaurant, good food. And you're paying. What's the occasion? What did I do to rate all this?”

  “You've done a lot for me, Sid. You know that. If it weren't for you, I'd still be doing five minutes between strippers.”

  He shrugged. “I doubt it, but thank you.”

  Sid picked up his fork off his plate, twisted it around, gave it a good looking over, set it down again.

  He said: “A condemned man eats a hearty meal.”

  “Sid—”

  “I'm a big boy, Jackie. I've been in the game a lot of years. I appreciate it, but you don't have to be nice about things.”

  Okay. If he wanted it straight, no chaser, fine by me. “You know Chet Rosen?”

  Sid nodded. “Took them longer than I figured to get to you.”

  “I want you to know if it—”

  “Yeah. I do know: If it weren't for me … You'll always be grateful for all I've done … It's business, right? It wouid've happened sooner or later.”

  To my ears he was sounding snide. I didn't care for the way snide sounded. I laid things out. “He can get me Sullivan.”

  “And it's always been about that. You do the Sullivan show and you got no problems anymore. All the doors fly open, and you're king of Hollywood.”

  “I came to you, Sid. I came to you and you didn't want to do this for me.”

  “No! It's not that I didn't—”

  “I came to you first, and you wouldn't do it.”

  “You're not ready.”

  “Jesus, please, not again with that.”

  Sid reached across the table, clamped me hard by the wrist, forced me to look at him. “You're still growing as an act, Jackie. Yeah, believe it or not, long as you've been at it, you're still growing. You're good and you're only going to get better. Better, more confident … That set, the one you w
rote in San Francisco—”

  Yanking my arm back from him: “I'm sick of waiting. Every time I think I've got something good, I see it melt away. Every time I think I've got it made, it all falls to pieces. Not anymore. I'm not letting this get away from me. I'm not … Fran's got her own show, for Christ's sake! ”

  “Would you leave Fran? Quit comparing yourse—”

  “When am I going to be ready? Huh? I have been ready since the first time I had to get down on hands and knees to clean up someone else's dirt for the nickels they gave me. I've been ready since the first time I got ridden to the floor by the back of someone's hand. I've been ready from the day I heard: ‘Nigger, go’ and ‘Nigger, fetch’ and ‘Nigger, why can't you be a little bit smarter, nigger?’ I have been ready all my life. Ready to get out, to go on, to move up—”

  “Ready to do whatever it takes.”

  My mind real quick conjured up a picture of Dighton Spooner flattened on a sidewalk with a splatter of blood spiderwebbing from his body. “Yes. Yes. To be respected? To be treated like a somebody? I never had that, Sid. Not from my father, not from my so-called friends—”

  “Not from Tammi? Fran? Not from me? All these years I haven't stood by you?”

  And then I let fly what I'd held in so long: “When I was supposed to do Fran's show, when CBS was giving her grief about that kiss, where were you, Sid? Off drying out somewhere because you couldn't keep yourself sober. That what you call standing by me?”

  My words came in a pack snarling and snapping. And you'd have thought, once said, no matter we were in public, match set to fuse, things would have exploded. Instead, they stayed real calm.

  “You're right, Jackie.” Sid was even in tone. Soft-spoken. The truth had always been with us. No denying it now, no fighting it. If anything, Sid was glad to have our shared secret finally spoken aloud. “I should have been there for you, and … I let myself fall off the wagon instead. I'm sorry for that, and I guess it doesn't matter that it was … or that I cleaned myself up. I never pretended to be a perfect person, so if that's what this is about—”

  “It's about you not doing your job. Drunk or dry, you didn't… you know? So don't sit there now and act like … whatever.”