Ride the Pink Horse (12 page)

He stopped laughing because of the look on her face, the older-than-time look. It wasn’t the look of a floozie like Rosie and yet he knew that if he’d wanted her he could have had her. As easy as he could give her a pop or a ride on Tio Vivo. He was no more important to her than that.

He wouldn’t have her on a bet. Because he was uneasy, he blustered, “You don’t need to worry about your old man knocking you around.”

She said, “My father is at the pueblo.”

He didn’t know what a pueblo was or where but he knew from the way she said it that her old man wasn’t around town. She didn’t have to worry about him turning up. It wasn’t that bothering her. Not understanding made him mad. He demanded, “Then what’s eating you? Let’s go.”

She parroted, “I cannot take you to this house.”

He was really mad by now. He was good enough to buy soda pop for her but he wasn’t good enough to take home. He might not look like any prize package at this moment but he was still good enough to go to an Indian shack. He said, “Okay. If that’s the way it is. Skip it.” He swung away from her up the street, not having any direction in his head, only to get away from a snotty Indian kid who didn’t think he was good enough to take home. He pounded on the broken bricks of the sidewalk, ignoring the presence on the walk of Fiesta.

He walked on, away from the Plaza, anywhere to get away from the gilded muck, from people who thought they were happy because they were all dressed up in ribbons and bobbles, eating hot dogs and chile, drinking pop, listening to plinking music. The smoke of Zozobra’s pyre had blurred their eyes; they believed their cry “Old Man Gloom is dead” meant just that, that a word could be fact by the act of being spoken.

He was halfway up the street when she brushed his shoulder. He hadn’t known she was following; it came as a surprise, a dirty surprise. He was savage, “What do you want now?”

She said, “I will go with you.”

He didn’t stop walking. He said, “Scram. I don’t want you.” He hit his heels harder on the walk, as if he were thumping her. It didn’t send her away. He felt the brush of her brown arm against his sleeve. “Beat it,” he said.

He might have been talking at the stone woman in the cold corridor of the Art Museum; not to a kid, old and young, on a dirty village street in a sun hot foreign town.

He stopped on the corner and faced her. “Go on,” he said, “beat it.”

It had been a mistake to look at her. Because looking at her he saw her eyes, her expressionless black eyes. He’d been afraid she might be about to turn on the weeps the way he’d talked to her. He hadn’t expected her to look just the same, so terribly unchanged, as if he weren’t there. She said, “I will go with you.”

He could have threatened her maybe and got rid of her. But he didn’t. All of a sudden it didn’t matter whether she came along or went away. It had no more importance than that; no more importance than his existence had to an Indian.

He crossed the street and walked on past the filling station, past the big house walled to the eaves, knowing she walked with him, not knowing why, not caring. He cut across beyond the big house, across to the sound of music over by the big building set in an iron-fenced park, the Federal Building. He hadn’t meant to go there. But when he reached the walk encircling the park he turned in at the iron gate, set ajar, into quiet greenness. The music somehow went with the quietness. It wasn’t good. It was nasal and plaintive, four adolescent boys lying there on the grass, singing in harmony, “Adios, mi amigo, adios . . .” It might have been the song, the song Pancho had sung, which made it sound good in the hot afternoon with the grass smelling sweet and cool under the big trees.

He walked across the graveled paths, away from the music, to a spot alone where the singing was a fainter quiver. He flung himself down on the spired grass. He didn’t look at Pila; he knew she was beside him. The sun sprayed through the tree leaves; heat cooled by greenness to a good warmth. He took off his hat and put it over his eyes.

Pila said, “I would not take you to this house. You would not be welcome.”

”Sure,” he said. “Sure.” He’d got it a long time ago. She didn’t have to draw a picture. He didn’t give a damn now. He was comfortable, a lot more comfortable than he’d be in a flea-bitten adobe dump.

“You would not be welcome because I bring you to this house. Because you come with an Indian to this house.”

He shifted the hat, enough so that his eyes could see her although she could not look under the brim shadow at him. “What they got against Indians?” he demanded. “They’re Indians, aren’t they? Your uncle and aunt?”

“My uncle, yes. He marry with a Spanish woman—Espanol—my aunt she is a Spanish woman. She, her people, do not think the Indians are so good as the Spanish people. If I take you to this house they will say you are a friend of a dirty Indian.”

“To hell with them,” he said. Zozobra was dead and everybody was down on the Plaza acting like they were all friends, Spanish and Indian and Mexican and Gringos. But the real Indians were sitting under the portal of the museum and the rich Gringo sonnama beeches were safe behind the garden walls of La Fonda and the Mexicans were remembering they’d once been the conquerors of this land and there wasn’t any brotherhood between them even if it was Fiesta. It didn’t mean anything to him; he was an outsider who’d wandered into this foreign land; all he had to do was finish his business and get out. He wasn’t losing any sleep over Pila and her folks.

He pulled his hat down over his eyes. “How come you’re staying with them?”

“It is very good of them to let me stay with them for the Fiesta.”

He couldn’t tell if she was sarcastic or not, her voice didn’t have any inflection. Nor her face. He didn’t bother to look.

“I must cause them no trouble. It is good of them to let me stay there.” She was repeating what someone had told her. “I have not been so lucky before. I must not bother Rosie.”

Drowsiness was green all around him, green and grass-smelling and sun-warm. Her light voice and the singing of the lazy boys all blurred together.

There was no period between waking and sleeping. He slept. Nor was there a period between sleeping and waking. He woke. He pushed away his hat. Pila was still sitting there, cross-legged beside him. She might not have moved in the interval.

The sun had moved. It slanted low over the lawn. He yawned, ”What time is it?” He looked at his watch. Four-thirty. The gun was hard in his pocket.

He had slept and he was revived. She had watched over him while he slept. He sat up, punched his battered hat in shape. “Thanks. I needed that.” He could finish the job now.

He stood up and stretched. A dash of water in the face, comb his hair and he was ready for the Sen. Maybe not as spruce as he’d be on Michigan Boulevard but his hand was just as steady. He said, “Come on.” They walked out of the park.

Pila said, “You slept so long you missed the parade.”

“What parade?”

“The De Vargas parade. It is a big parade. I could hear the horses and the music.”

He scowled, “Why didn’t you go to it?”

“You were asleep,” she stated.

“What the hell—” he began.

She said, “I did not want you to be alone while you sleep.”

He shook his head. “Did you think something might happen to me?” She didn’t know he carried a gun. “I can take care of myself any time.”

Her voice was soft. “When I am in a strange house I do not like to be alone while I sleep.”

He shut up. Feeling a little queer inside. Because she’d said it, said he was a stranger, said he wasn’t he in this strange house. That he couldn’t take care of himself in this alien world. He needed a guardian, even if it was just an Indian kid.

They could see the Plaza from the street they took, hear the muted music, the human sounds over it. They scuffed through litter, walking the last block in silence. When they reached the museum he stopped her.

“You can’t go with me now,” he said. “I got business.” He felt good. Because he’d been wrong thinking she was hostile to the stranger; she was his friend. “Meet me later at Tio Vivo and I’ll buy you a flock of rides.” He felt better than he had since he boarded the bus in Chicago. “If the deal comes off I’ll buy you anything you want. What do you want more than anything else in the world?”

She said solemnly, “A permanent wave.”

He was still laughing as he swung away from her, cutting across the Plaza, to the hotel, and to the Sen.

3

It wasn’t more than a few minutes past five when he came up from the men’s room. He’d washed up, brushed himself off as best he could. He didn’t look as if he’d been sleeping in the park. The patio was filled but quietly; a few, not many persons milled in the lobby. He started towards the Cantina. Started and didn’t dare turn aside when McIntyre rose up to meet him. Mac hadn’t any business being here yet. It wasn’t time for his appointment McIntyre said, “Hello. You’re early.”

“A little.” It hadn’t occurred to him that Mac would be here waiting. He didn’t know what to say to the cop. He couldn’t tell him to beat it until his own private confab with the Sen was done. He had to carry Mac with him. Not knowing if the Sen would join him if he saw the cop there. Not knowing how he’d get rid of Mac for the necessary moments alone.

“Going in now or wait for him here?” McIntyre asked.

“Might as well go in,” Sailor said. He laughed a short one. “Maybe he’s still in there.”

McIntyre followed Sailor this time. He said, “He isn’t. He and his party left about two o’clock.”

McIntyre was watching close. Watching the Sen as close as he was watching Sailor.

Sailor asked wryly, “You been counting noses in the lobby all afternoon?” But he wanted to know.

McIntyre said, “No. I took a nap.”

Were McIntyre’s eyes knowing? He couldn’t tell. Did McIntyre know he’d been sleeping up on the Federal lawn?

He asked ironically, “You haven’t been doing Fiesta?”

McIntyre chose the table again. Not in line of the entrance this time. Around in back of the tree where the Sen would have to look for them. And finding them couldn’t act as if he hadn’t seen them. McIntyre was smart as hell. He even chose the chair he wanted, putting Sailor’s back to the entrance, placing himself where he could glimpse anyone coming in. But the branches of the tree hid his face.

“I caught a bit of the parade,” McIntyre said, “but I decided to skip the Chocolate. Not that it didn’t sound peaceful but the fashion show with it—” he shook his head. “I didn’t think a guy like me would be any asset.” He smiled. “Mrs. McIntyre will be mad at me for missing it.”

He’d never thought of McIntyre having a Mrs. McIntyre. He’d never thought of McIntyre having any life but on the Chicago streets. Like a dog. Smelling out trouble, trotting after trouble, digging up old bones of trouble. Until the commissioner boosted him to a desk and a leather chair. Where he could rest his nose and his feet, send other cops out to follow trouble.

Sailor said, “I didn’t know you were married.”

“Eighteen years,” Mac said. “Have one girl in college this year.”

The waitress who came to the table wasn’t pretty or young; her mouth wore tired lines and she didn’t care that they weren’t ready to order. She left the table and stood with another waitress by the open-air fireplace. The pert blonde wasn’t around.

Sailor said, “Sure you don’t want something?”

“I’d take a drink. This Sunday law is a hindrance. To a working man.”

“I could use a beer.” Then he grinned. “Thought you were here for the show.”

“That’s right,” was all McIntyre said. “What did you do this afternoon?”

“Took a nap,” Sailor said like Mac had said.

McIntyre didn’t ask any questions. As if he knew where. But he didn’t know if he too had been sleeping. Sailor didn’t want Mac to know. He didn’t want to have to explain that he hadn’t been laying with an Indian girl; that she had tagged after him, that was all.

There were a few parties in the Placita, drinking parties. None of the Sen’s crowd. The parties had brought their own bottles; the men pulled them out from under the tables like in prohibition days. The waitresses brought set-ups. The Sunday law evidently didn’t cover drinking, only selling of drinks.

Sailor said, “I wonder if he went to the Chocolate.” He could see the Sen’s greedy eyes watching dressed-up girls trot by. No. The Sen would be watching Iris Towers. No one else. But his eyes would still be greedy.

“No. He went to Tesuque to a private affair.” It surprised him again, that McIntyre was keeping that close tabs on the Sen.

“The Van der Kirks’ ranch,” McIntyre said. “They came over during the war and stayed. Not poor refugees. Diamonds.”

Not poor if the Sen were there. The Sen didn’t visit the poor. He used them. For his dirty work.

“Will he get back in time?” Sailor wondered aloud before he realized it was out loud.

“I think he will,” McIntyre said. “I think he’ll be anxious for you to tell him what I was talking about at lunch.”

Sailor pulled in his belt. “I can’t talk to him with you sitting here.”

“I’ll tell him myself,” McIntyre said without inflection.

If he could only bust open McIntyre’s head, see what was inside it. If he could only lay out those little squares, like lottery tickets, each one labeled with a name and a thought and a plan. Was his name on the winning ticket, the losing ticket; or was it the Sen’s? He couldn’t ask McIntyre; he could only sit tight and wait. And make talk.

“How many kids you got?”

“Two girls and a boy.” Talk suited McIntyre. He too had to wait.

McIntyre would live in a suburb, Evanston probably. A nice house, maybe white pickets, maybe a green hedge. A green lawn and trees and flowers; Mac cutting the grass on a summer Sunday, shoveling snow off the walks on a winter morning. Mrs. McIntyre in a tiled kitchen fixing him and the kids good dinners.

“Patsy, the oldest, she’s the one in college. University of Chicago. Molly, she’s the pretty one, still in High. She wants to be a criminologist.” He smiled at memory. “Ted’s only twelve. Eagle Scout this year. Scouting’s a good thing for boys.”

“So is being born in the right part of town,” Sailor said.

McIntyre said quietly, “I was born four blocks from where you were, Sailor.”

He hadn’t known that. Long as he’d known Mac, he hadn’t known he came from the old ward. His mouth twisted. “How did you get out?”

“Not any easy way.” His eye was on Sailor.

“You think I came out easy?”

Mac didn’t answer that. He said, “I joined the force when I was twenty-one. That was twenty years ago, twenty years last spring.” He kept his eye on Sailor. “It isn’t easy pounding pavements summer and winter. Lots of work, little pay in those days.” His mouth tightened. “What I grew up with down there, from the time I was a kid, made me want to make the world better, not worse.”

Sailor said belligerently, “Your old lady didn’t scrub floors, I bet. I’ll bet your old man wasn’t a drunken sot.”

“My mother worked in a laundry. My father in the yards. No, he wasn’t a drunk, Sailor.” His eye was steady. “I’ve wondered often why with what you went through, you didn’t grow up feeling like I did. Wanting to make things better, not worse.”

“I’ve made them better for me,” Sailor bristled.

McIntyre didn’t say anything. He just looked until Sailor moved his eyes, pulled out his cigarettes. Sailor said to the cigarettes, “I don’t owe the world nothing. It never did anything for me.”

McIntyre said, “I’ve heard a lot of you say that. It’s always seemed to me you were blaming the world for something missing in you.”

“What are you trying to say?” Sailor scowled.

“The world doesn’t care much what happens to us. Least that’s the way I’ve always figured. Like this table.” He flattened his hand on the painted metal. “It doesn’t care if you bump your shin on it. It doesn’t even know you’re around. That’s the world. The way I see it.” He lifted his hand and looked at the palm as if the paint had smeared it. He had a broad hand but his fingers were thin. “It’s up to you what you are. Good or bad. You get the choice. You can do anything you want to with yourself. You can use the world”—again he touched the table—”or you can break your toes on it. The world doesn’t care. It’s up to you.” He smiled faintly. “Seems I tried to tell you that a long time ago, Sailor.”

Sailor said out of his scowl, “Maybe you think I chose to be starved and beaten when I was a kid.”

McIntyre’s eyes saddened. Briefly. “I guess kids can’t choose. Not while they’re kids.” Then he looked straight into Sailor. “But when you’re old enough for choice, it’s up to you. The right way or the wrong way. Good or bad.”

“You think I chose wrong.” Sailor was casual, drawing on his cigarette. “You think I shouldn’t have let the Sen help me out? Send me to college. The U of Chicago like your kid. You think maybe I ought to have pounded the pavements like you instead of letting a good guy help me out.” The Sen had been a good guy once. Sailor wouldn’t be where he was today if the Sen hadn’t given him a lift.

McIntyre said, “There’s a lot of old stories, might be true, about a man selling his soul to the Devil.”

Sailor jerked back his head and laughed. A good long laugh as if it were funny. Mac just sat there. And it wasn’t funny. The Devil could look like the Sen. The Devil didn’t have to have red horns and a forked tail and a red union suit; he could have a big snout and a brush mustache and wear the best clothes in Chicago. The Sen was a devil. If Mac knew half what Ziggy and Sailor knew, he wasn’t just shooting off his mouth, Sailor said, as if it were still funny, “As long as you’re preaching, Mac, what about God? He’s supposed to take care of us, isn’t He? That’s what they used to tell me at school. God’ll take care of you.”

Mac said, “I don’t know.” He spoke slowly, like he was thinking it out. “Maybe it’s like it says in Scripture. You can choose between God and the Devil. Good or bad. Right or wrong. It’s written that way, more than once in The Book. I’m no preacher, Sailor. You know me better than that. But I see a lot of the wrong way. Makes a man think. The only way I can see it is that maybe God doesn’t want those that choose the Devil. The Devil’s own they used to call them. Maybe He withholds His hand, waits for them to turn to Him. To decide to go right, not wrong.” He added it so quietly he might have still been thinking. “Want to tell me where the senator was the night she was killed?”

It was like something not real, sitting there in the quiet walled garden with the sun slanting through the crooked branches of the old green trees. Something in a book, Mac talking about God and the Devil and right and wrong. With a funny hat on his head. Not preaching but talking like a preacher only straight, a man to a man, not set up high in a pulpit talking to too many people and most of them not listening. Most of them having a Sunday-morning snooze. Then Mac said it and he was a copper again. A smart copper, catching you off guard. Only when he said it his face put on its mask suddenly and Sailor looked where he was looking. The Sen was there. The Devil in a white shirt and white pants and a red sash. And a vicious look that went from his eyes so quickly you wouldn’t believe it had been there.

The Sen was looking for Sailor and he was caught by the eyes of Sailor and Mac before he could act as if he were looking for someone else.

He tried not to be caught. He nodded as if he were greeting an acquaintance. Sailor spoke fast, knowing he had to grab onto the Sen before he faded out for another night. Even knowing how the Sen would be when they were alone, he spoke. “Hello. Thought you weren’t coming,” he said.

That was when the viciousness fleeted through these narrow dark eyes.

McIntyre took it over fast. He said, “I hope you don’t mind my intruding, Senator. I asked your secretary if he’d give me an introduction to you.”

The Sen was caught. He stood there while Sailor said, “This is Chief McIntyre, Senator Douglass. From Chicago too.” As if the Sen didn’t know.

The Sen sat down then, as if he were brittle, as if he might break if he sat down in the white metal chair. But his tongue was smooth the way it could be. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Chief. Seems strange we’d travel across the country to meet, doesn’t it?” His smile was right.

“Yes,” McIntyre said.

“I’d offer you a drink but the bar’s closed. As you know, doubtless.” He took his cigarette case and passed it. McIntyre took one. Sailor didn’t. He wasn’t offered. “You here on business, Chief?”

“Partly,” McIntyre said. He accepted a light from the white-gold lighter. The lighter that never sputtered, that always made a good pointed flame.

The Sen touched it to his own smoke. He acted surprised. “A little far from your bailiwick, isn’t it? It must be important for the Chief of the Bureau to handle it.”

“It is important,” McIntyre said. “It’s about the death of your wife.”

The Sen didn’t show any surprise. He just looked properly solemn. Solemn and a small bit touched with grief. He didn’t say anything. He could act; he was good at acting. But when he was acting, he wasn’t safe. He was too sure of himself, on top. Sailor didn’t like it. He kept his eyes under his lids on the Sen. He could keep them there because the Sen wasn’t paying any attention to him. This was between the Sen and McIntyre. The Sen finally put surprise and curiosity into a question. “Really?”

“Yes,” McIntyre said.

“But—” The Sen touched ash to the tray. McIntyre didn’t help. The Sen had to go on with it. “I thought you did a splendid job in solving her tragic end so quickly.”

“We thought so too,” McIntyre said. “But Jerky Spizzoni didn’t kill her.”

The Sen looked properly shocked. He could have said a lot of different things then but he didn’t. He was smart He waited.”That’s why I’m working,” McIntyre said. “I’m looking for the man who killed her.”

The Sen took that and mulled it. He said, “It’s hard to believe. The commissioner was sure—”

“New evidence,” McIntyre cut in. “Spizzoni didn’t get to town that night until after she was killed.”

“The gun— The fingerprints—” The Sen acted innocent as hell. He fumbled as an innocent man would.

“Somebody had Jerky’s gun. With his fingerprints still on it. It was smart,” McIntyre admitted.

He didn’t know how smart it was. Ziggy had taken care of that. Visiting day. Ziggy had told the Jerk somebody wanted to buy his gat; to put a price on it.

Jerky had handled that gun every day before he was sent up. When he was shipped, the Sen had made sure the gat was tucked away in a clean handkerchief, that no one else touched it. Maybe the Sen had known then. Maybe that was why Jerky had been sold out.