Ride the Pink Horse (18 page)

Mac didn’t answer him. Not straight. “What happened between you and the Sen?” He wanted the answer to that one. Something different in the way of asking.

“What do you mean?” Sailor sounded as innocent as he wanted to sound. Let Mac take the lead here. Until later when he spilled the whole business. But as he spoke they came out of the Cantina, Kemper Prague and the lovely Iris Towers. They gave Mac his question.

“It wouldn’t be his new friends?”

They didn’t come across the lobby. They went out of sight into the left-hand portal. Going up to see the poor sick Sen. The hidden Sen. Take him a drink. Or an aspirin. Or a satin white hand for his aching head.

Sailor was short. “No.” He couldn’t say that he and the Sen were the same as ever with the Sen accusing him to Mac last night. That was too raw. That was why he’d spill everything to Mac once he collected. He had to collect first or Mac might take the Sen away before Sailor had his chance.

Mac said mildly, “I didn’t know. See you later, Sailor,” and he was gone. No excuses, just gone, down the right-hand portal. To ride up in the elevator with them. To find out where the senator was holed. Beating Sailor to it. And the Sen’s new friends, his rich society friends wouldn’t even notice the quiet man in the funny Spanish hat and sash. Any of the old organization would. Not one of the old organization who wouldn’t spot a cop on sight.

He was too restless to sit there longer. The Sen wasn’t going to come out, not until he thought he was safe. Mac would find out where and Sailor could get it out of Mac later. He could, if he had to, make a deal with Mac. Promise the story if he could have fifteen minutes with the Sen alone first. That was all he needed. He could cut it down to ten.

He might as well eat lunch. Not here where they’d soak you; he’d go back to the Kansas City steak house. Eat his kind of food. Fool around a little, have a cold beer later, get back to the hotel around cocktail time. If he couldn’t get to the Sen by that time, make the deal with Mac. One thing sure; he had to get out of town tonight. If he didn’t Mac might see to it that Sailor turned back to Chicago tomorrow. He’d have to say he was returning with them tomorrow and pull a sneak tonight. After he’d told Mac the truth.

The momentum of music and color and motion, of sound and smell had increased on the Plaza. Fiesta was revolving to climax, as if by moving faster and faster the end might be delayed. As if accentuation of its gayety might delay the return to tomorrow’s dull everyday.

Sailor walked in the street it was simpler than being pushed off the high curb by the sidewalk crowds. Past the corner of Tio Vivo, Pancho sweating at his toil; Ignatz and Onofre plinking and plunking mechanically. Past the thatched booths, past the chile and the pop and the cardboard canaries swinging on their willowy rods. Past the balloon man. Stepping aside for the burro carts and the horses with their costumed riders, past the corner where strolling musicians sang to little clusters of listeners.

“Hello, Sailor.”

She giggled when she said it, giggled and blocked his way. It was Rosie, with the paint on her mouth and cheeks, the invitation in her black eyes and in the twist of her immature body. She was arm-linked with a different girl today, a girl lush as the flaming roses in her hair, a girl with rippling black hair and swelling breasts and wide hips. A girl with a dirty neck and a gum-chewing mouth and wide beautiful eyes.

“Looking for Pila?” Rosie giggled.

He said, “No,” and started by them.

“I bet Pila she is looking for you,” Rosie said.

He’d push her out of the way, the little slut, if she didn’t move. Her and the exquisite slattern with her. He made another attempt to pass.

“I bet she is looking for you to say goodbye,” Rosie giggled.

He stopped. “Is Pila going somewhere?”

“Yes, she is going.” She evidently couldn’t talk without the silly giggle.

“Where?”

“She is going home,” Rosie said. “Her father he has come to take her home. Back to San Ildefonso. They are Indians.” Her giggle went up and down again like the shrill of a flute.

“I know it,” he said brusquely. “When is she going?” He owed her a pop or another ride or a permanent wave. He’d promised her.

Rosie shrugged. “I don’t know when,” she singsonged in her accent. “Maybe tonight.” He’d been interested; she hadn’t expected it. She’d thought he would laugh at Pila too. He wanted to knock the frizz off her head, knock the paint off her mouth.

The slattern put her slow black eyes into him. “Muy macho,” she slurred.

Rosie remembered her then and perked up. “This is my friend, Jesusita. ‘Sita, this is Sailor I was telling you about.”

Jesusita said, “Hallo.” With the same look

If he was going to be here, time on his hands, he might stick around with these two. He might give the slattern a knowing eye. She’d be worth a trip to the Federal Building. But he was getting out. He didn’t need to fool around with slovenly dames; he’d have his pick in Mexico City.

He said, “Tell Pila I want to see her before she goes,” and he moved quick, past them, out of the Fiesta square, covering the quarter block and turning the corner to the steak house. He didn’t look back. He didn’t know if Rosie had any intention of passing on the message. Nor if Pila could get away from her old man for the last afternoon of Fiesta on the Plaza.

He walked on fast to the restaurant. It wasn’t crowded this time of day. If Pila was staying over till tonight he could treat her to the permanent wave. With the Sen’s money. He’d have it tonight. He had forty dollars left and a pocketful of change. Not much. Not enough to take care of Pancho and Pila like he wanted to. Enough for now. He’d been saving money, sleeping and eating and doctoring with the natives. If anyone had told him before he left Chi that he was going to move in with a spic carnival operator and play Lord Bountiful to an Indian kid during Fiesta, he’d have told them how nutty they were. If anyone had told him he was going to take in a Fiesta he wouldn’t have known what they were talking about. Travel was sure broadening, he didn’t think. That was just another of the Sen’s crummy ideas. Maybe it was broadening if you had your dead wife’s fifty grand to splurge with.

He paid the check, stuck a toothpick in his mouth. Outside he threw away the toothpick. The Sen had taught him better. He walked back up the street, taking his time. That was all he had to do now, waste time. Until five o’clock. It wasn’t quite three.

3

The clouds had piled up over the cathedral, not storm clouds, big white ones, soft and thick as marshmallows. The sun was hot, the sky a burning blue. If he had a room, he’d go take a nap. When he got to Mexico City he’d get the best room in the best hotel and sleep for a week. He’d lay in the bathtub for another week.

He didn’t want to go back to the Plaza but there wasn’t any place else to go. Unless he went to La Fonda and sat in the lobby. And talked to Mac. He’d never run into Pila in La Fonda lobby. He wanted to tell the kid goodbye. He wondered how much her permanent wave would cost. It wasn’t her fault the Sen had ratted again last night. She’d look like hell with a permanent wave.

He wandered up the street, automatically ducking the kids, his ears filled with cacophony of noise, music and jabber and singing and laughing and crying, all kinds of noise mixed up into one big Fiesta noise. He wandered on up to the corner where Fiesta was most noisy, where Pancho made Tio Vivo gallop a lively course. Pancho was a funny guy. He didn’t have anything to be happy about but he was always happy. He didn’t care about getting any place. He didn’t care where he slept or what he hung on his back or what he put in his stomach.

A funny guy. Sailor wondered what Ziggy would make of Pancho. Ziggy studied guys, figured them out. Sailor went around in back of the merry-go-round, leaned against the fence. The kids weren’t on this side. They crowded in by the gate. He could watch Pancho without Pancho knowing it. Watch the big muscles swelling under the sweaty shirt. He couldn’t figure Pancho out. Working like a ditch-digger for nickels. Not for nickels, to make a bunch of kids happy. Maybe that’s why Pancho was happy, because he was making other people happy. Even making an amigo out of a stranger. A funny guy.

While he was leaning there, he saw Pila. She was on the other side, in back of the kids, watching Tio Vivo. He didn’t know her at first. She wasn’t in the costume; she was wearing a plain blue dress, the kind kids wore in orphanages, white collar on it, big buttons down the front of it. Her hair hung in braids; she looked like the little kid she was. He went around to her as quick as he could push the mob of kids aside, came up behind her.

“I’ll buy you a ride on the pink horse,” he said.

She turned slowly. “No. My father he is waiting for me. To take me home.”

“I’ll buy you a pop. A pink pop.” He took her arm. “You can take it with you, drink it on the way home.” He pushed her through the crowd, out of the park to the pop stand. He rang down the dime for the bottle.

Pila said, “Rosie, she say you want to see me.” He put the pop bottle in her hand. “Yeah. About that permanent.”

Her eyes didn’t leave his face. The eyes of the kid in front of the bike window. Not hopeless, simply without hope.

“How much would it cost you?”

“For three dollars, Rosie she can get a permanent.”

Things were cheaper in the sticks. The dames the Sen knew paid twenty bucks in Chicago. He grinned, “It’s a deal. He took the bills from his pocket, peeled a five, added another.

She looked at the money in his hand but she didn’t touch it.

“Go on, take it,” he said. “I promised you, didn’t I?”

“It does not cost this much.”

He put the bills in her small brown hand. “After you get it, you’ll need a new dress, won’t you?” He looked down at the orphan shoes on her feet. “And some shoes.”

“My father—”

“You don’t have to tell your old man, do you?”

She crumpled the bills into her pocket, pushed her hand down on them. “Thank you.” She didn’t grin and jump around like Lorenzo. If somebody had handed Sailor the red bike out of Field’s window, he wouldn’t have jumped around. He’d have stood there looking up, saying, “Thank you,” like he hadn’t any other words in his heart.

She said, “I must go to my father.”

“Sure.” He swung along beside her.

She was clutching the pop bottle to her blue dress.

“I don’t know what you want a permanent for,” he said. Making conversation. Just wondering.

She looked at him. Like he was the Sen. “Then I can come into town and go to work. Like Rosie. Rosie gets five dollars a week cleaning houses. I can clean better than Rosie, I learn at the Indian school. At nights Rosie goes to the picture show and to dances—”

The bright lights of the big hick town. A permanent and a new dress and working out like Rosie. Meeting the boys after dark. Next year the old man wouldn’t count. Laying with the boys on the Federal Building lawn. Like Rosie.

“Listen,” he said. He grabbed her arm and she almost dropped the pink pop but she caught it, clutched it more tightly. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t you do it. You stay where you are. Stay at the pueblo. Get yourself fixed up if you have to but you stay there. With your own people. Find you a guy there, a good guy. One your old man likes. You don’t belong here, Pila. You’re too good to be like Rosie.” He didn’t know what he was talking about. Old Mother Sailor. He didn’t know why he was afraid, why he was warning her off. She’d do what she wanted to. But he could try.

“Don’t forget what I’m telling you. Stay where you belong.” He was trying to tell her. “Fiesta only lasts three days. After that Zozobra isn’t dead any more.” Maybe she’d get it. Maybe she’d think about it. He didn’t say any more. They were at the end of the museum portal and she turned to him.

“Goodbye.”

He wasn’t to go any further with her. He got it. He watched her cross the street, watched her walk down to a pickup truck in front of the Art Museum. She climbed in the back of it. There were already a bunch of kids in it and a couple of women with calico shawls over their heads. One of the two men against the side of the truck must be her father. The two looked like all the men around here, old jeans, old shirts, battered hats. Lean brown faces. They both climbed in the front of the truck. Sailor stood watching while the truck backed out, shook and clanked on its way. She didn’t wave goodbye; she didn’t know he was there watching. She was drinking the pink pop.

He’d tried. He didn’t know now why he’d given her ten bucks. Ten from forty left thirty. Not much money to go on. Maybe he thought she’d be his lucky piece. Maybe he was paying off the look in her eyes, the look that scared him. Because it knew too much, it knew what had happened and was to happen; the look that denied him existence because in time, Indian time, he was without existence. He’d paid off; it wasn’t his fault if it backfired. If she turned into a Rosie by next Fiesta. He’d warned her. The rest was up to her.

And if someone had warned him to stick to the straight and narrow when he was fourteen? Someone had. Mac had. Sailor shook away thought. Maybe she’d be better off if she did leave the dump where she lived and the old man beating her and came to the bright lights of town. There was nothing wrong with trying to better yourself. It had worked for him. But then he hadn’t been an innocent kid. Ignorant but not innocent He wasn’t either one now. The Sen had taken care of that.

The clouds were a blazing white in the bright blue sky. The Plaza was bedraggled as the flowered skirts trailing in the dust. On the bandstand an orchestra of Spanish kids was squeaking out of tune. The curbs were solid with women and babies and old men getting off their feet. You’d think they didn’t have a home to go to. He strolled over to Tio Vivo, knocked the kids out of the way to reach the palings. He felt good for no reason; he’d feel better to get out of the hot dirty square into a place where you could know the feel of a cold bottle of beer. Only he didn’t want to be alone. Or with Mac

He yelled over the fence, “Hey, Pancho.”

Pancho heard him. He gave the crank a couple of more turns and left it to unwind. He wiped his face with a blue bandanna as he came over to the fence.

“How about a beer?”

“Un tragito,” Pancho sighed and swallowed his spittle. “I would like a beer, yes. Muy bueno.”

“Come on. I’m buying.”

Pancho shook his head. “But now I cannot go.” He gestured to the horde of waiting children. “Come back in a little while, Sailor-man. Six o’clock when it is supper time and not so many are here. Ignacio will do well enough when there are not so many.”

“Okay.” He had to say okay. Pancho was already shuffling back to his labor.

Well, he could get himself a bottle. Nothing wrong with that. He could go sit in the Placita behind the protecting wall. Under a tree. Only he’d run into Mac and it was better not to see Mac. He could go to Keen’s. It was a tossup between Mac and the ape; a tossup between luxury and a smoky, smelly bar. He moved on to La Fonda. He could handle Mac. And the Sen might be recovered, might be cooling his fever with beer in the Placita.

The lobby was still like a convention; the Cantina like the El at rush hour. He pushed through them just the same. The Placita wasn’t much better but it was quieter. And it didn’t smell. In front of the open fireplace, there was a guitarist and a singer that were in tune. There wasn’t a table, not just then. There were a half a dozen fancy costumes waiting for a table. He didn’t wait. He cut across to where a party was about to leave and when they left he sat down. The crowd at the entrance didn’t like it but he didn’t mind. The pert blonde was waiting tables again in his corner. When she flipped her starched skirt past him he said, “How’s for a big bottle of beer?”

She nodded. She had too many tables to serve and she’d be a long time coming back with the beer. He didn’t care. He was comfortable. The Sen wasn’t around nor any of his party. The people out here were having fun without thinking they had to make a lot of racket like the hicks in the bar. Sailor shoved back his hat. He could sit here till five o’clock if he wanted to. The blonde finally brought the beer. She poured half of it into a glass. Pouring it right, slowly, handling the head. He said, “On your next trip in from Gary how about another?” He thought she was eying the empty chairs and he said, “I’m expecting friends.”

She said, “I’ll be glad when Fiesta is over. This place is a madhouse.”

“Yeah.” She wasn’t as pert as yesterday; there were tired smudges under her eyes. “Why don’t you have one with me?”

Her eyes flirted. “I wish I could. But I won’t be through till nine.”

She wanted him to make a date. She wasn’t bold but she was invitational. He pretended regret. “I’m leaving before then.”

“You’re not staying for the Baile?” She was stalling for a little rest, resting her feet and her nerves.

“What’s that?”

“The big dance. And there’ll be street dancing on the Plaza.”

He shook his head. “Can’t do it. Got to get my business wound up and be on my way.”

She laughed. “If you’re here on business, you’re the only one here on business.” She flipped her starched skirt. “I’ll bring you the beer then I can.”

“Make it two.”

He hadn’t seen Mac. The copper was sitting there at the table; the waitress had blocked him from sight until she moved away. “Don’t mind if I join you, Sailor?”

“No,” he said heartily. As if he didn’t mind. “They’re pretty busy. You’ll probably have to wait for the beer.”

“I can wait,” Mac said. That was McIntyre. He could wait. For a beer or a man or a story he was after. “How did you rate a table, Sailor?”

“Hijacked it.” He lifted a glass. “You don’t mind?”

“Go ahead.” Mac lit a cigarette, laid the pack on the table. “Sailor?”

“Have my own, thanks.” He set down the glass. Good beer. He lit up, left his pack on the table. Mac wasn’t the Sen; he wouldn’t snitch them. “You see the Sen?”

“No.”

“Find out where he is?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“You can’t get to him, Sailor. Doctor’s orders. He’s to see no one. That’s why his room is changed.”

If Mac would tell him where, he’d see him. No doctor would keep him out. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Nervous exhaustion.”

Sailor”s laugh was a vulgar noise. “That’s a new name for it.”

Mac smiled, a faint smile. Then he didn’t smile. “You were at the senator’s the night Mrs. Douglass was killed.”

“Uh-uh.” He poured some more beer in the glass. Steady and smooth, watching the amber bubbles lift into foam white as snow-white clouds.

“Fingerprints don’t lie.”

He drank comfortably. “I was there a lot. But not that night”

“You weren’t there a lot,” Mac denied quietly.

The blonde brought two more bottles and his change. “Thanks, doll,” Sailor said. He left a quarter, put another bill on the tray for the bottles.

Mac was pouring from his bottle. “The senator didn’t take his business associates to his home.”

“I was his confidential secretary,” Sailor pointed out

“You hadn’t been there that week. The panes were washed on Tuesday. Your prints are on the French doors.”

He’d worn gloves. Mac wanted him to say he’d worn gloves. He didn’t let McIntyre have any idea he’d like to slug him, pulling something like this on him. He brazened, “So you got a witness who’ll perjure himself.”

Mac said, “When the time comes, I have some good witnesses.”

“What have you been waiting for?” Sailor demanded. “If you got all these swell witnesses, if you think you can break my alibi, what have you been waiting for?” He’d let his anger come up and he shouldn’t have. He took a quick drink to cool him.

Mac was calm as a mill pond. “Sure, I could have picked you up. In Chicago weeks ago. I didn’t want to, Sailor. I wanted to get the man who killed her.” Sailor relaxed. “You know who killed her. So do I.”

Sailor didn’t say a word.

“But until you tell me, I can’t get him.” Mac spoke mildly, “A confidential secretary knows a lot about what goes on.”

“He doesn’t spill.”

Mac said, “After he’s quit?”

“You think I’ve quit?”

“The senator says that you killed her.”

He saw red again, at the dirty, lying Sen. But he clamped his mouth.

“What do you say?”

“I say I didn’t. I didn’t. You can take me in but you’ll never prove I did it. I didn’t.”

Mac said, “How about another beer?”

Sailor”s hand touched the second bottle. “I’m all right. You have another.” He looked around for the blonde but he didn’t see her. He saw another one. She was over in the corner and her shining head was bent to a good-looking blonde guy and his head was bent to hers. It wasn’t the Prague mucker. Their shoulders were touching. Under the table maybe their knees were touching. More than their knees. Because in their look was longing. They weren’t smiling at each other; they weren’t happy.