Ed Lacy - Room To Swing
I drove down to Canal Street and parked outside the phone building, lit my pipe. Miss Robbens said the TV studio had other work for investigators; if I buttered her up, remained her pet Negro for a while—how much of it could I get? Ted had said the main thing was contacts; she could be that. First thing I had to do was move out of my bedroom-office, put up a big-time front. It would cost but it was worth the gamble.
Sybil came out with a group of women and as usual she liked the idea of my Jaguar waiting for her, the impression we both made on the other women—all of them white. Although my darkness was a real “problem” to Sybil, with the phone-company white girls she made a point of giving me a big fat kiss whenever I picked her up, as if to prove she was a Negro and proud of it, and all that.
Opening the door, I watched her walk toward the car, the sway of her solid hips. I hadn't seen her for two days and now she had a blond streak in her auburn hair—the newest style. It looked phony on her.
Sybil was what my old man used to call “tinted whites”: her skin was a creamy white and her hair was “good” (an expression that used to make the old man mount his soapbox at once). I suppose Sybil could have easily “passed.” She had the kind of colour and features that if you saw her in Harlem you'd assume she was “coloured.” If you saw her downtown you might think she was Spanish, if you thought about it at all. When I was out with Sybil I often collected the same kind of “looks” I'd picked up with Kay. I suppose the reason Sybil didn't pass was her old-fashioned ideas about colour—the prestige she thought her lightness gave her in Harlem.
Sybil was a habit with me. We had been going together for about three years. Her parents were from one of the islands and when she was a kid in Washington, D.C., Sybil had tried hard to lose her accent; now she worked harder at keeping it, spoke with a kind of clipped English. She was twenty-nine years old, had married a jerk when she was a kid, worked in an aircraft factory during the war to put her husband through med school. When the army took over his education this louse divorced Sybil and married a Chicago widow who owned real estate. Sybil was a habit, as I said, and most times a very comfortable habit. We hit it off, although sometimes her phony standards made me go straight up. Like the few times I'd realized how she felt about my dark skin, or like she would never come to my room, although Roy and Ollie knew all about us.
We kissed, her mouth cool, a good smell of perfume about her. “This is a surprise, Touie.”
Cutting across Canal to the highway, I said, “I was downtown on a case. A big fish, honey. I'm going to make fifteen hundred dollars!” As we raced up the highway, the Hudson rough and cold looking, I told her as much about the case as I could. Then my ideas about opening a real office downtown, perhaps going to school for a month or so to learn about these electrical gadgets.
Sybil thought I ought to pay up my debts, bank the rest, forget my big ideas. But of course she was thrilled about me getting the dough and we were doing fine. Two mistakes. I mean driving along the Hudson in my Jag.
We reached her brownstone basement one-room “apartment”—with a view of the river, if you stuck your head far enough out the window to break your neck (and for which she was paying seventy-two dollars a month). As I took off my coat and tie, I mentioned the post-office deal. That tore it.
“Oh, Touie, darling!” Sybil said, putting everything she had into a big hug. “That's the real news. When do you start?”
“I don't know,” I said, kissing her, running my hands through her soft hair. And wondering, for no damn reason, how many generations it took to produce her creamy skin. “I don't even know if I'm going to take it.”
I felt her tighten up before she stepped back out of my arms. “Why not? It's civil service, what we've always talked about.”
“Sure, S.O.P. for a Negro. That's why they call the main post office Uncle Tom's Cabin. Sybil, honey, this TV contract changes things. This is my big chance to start a real agency.”
“You sound like a little boy infatuated with private eyes,” she said coldly, taking off her coat. She was wearing a simple striped blouse and skirt that showed off her chunky figure. Sybil was very style conscious, mainly because she had this crazy idea a coloured woman had to prove she knew how to dress. The trouble was, often the “latest” styles weren't intended for Sybil's solid figure.
Hanging up my jacket I took out my wallet. “How much do I owe you, honey?”
She pulled back the Japanese screen from the kitchenette, started the coffee working. “Thirty-five dollars.”
I gave her fifty bucks extra. “Buy yourself something.”
Very pleased, she thanked me with a tiny kiss, pocketed the money, and went on with her cooking. I started on my specialty—a tossed salad.
She put on eggs and sausages, humming to herself. I knew exactly how her mind was working. As if I were an excited kid that needed cooling off, a moment later she said, “Touie, this is your big opportunity, so let's not talk nonsense. You'll sub for a few years, but even so, you'll be making about four thousand, and what with my job we can easily afford a new apartment, perhaps in the houses being built on 125th Street, interracial, too. We'll buy all new furniture, and a new car. Or a house out in St. Albans with—”
“What's wrong with my Jag?”
“Nothing, but in time we'll buy a new one. Darling, this is security, you know that as well as I do.”
“A top detective agency, that can mean real folding money.”
“All right, get it out of your system, talk about it. Be honest, dear, you only got into the detective business by chance. What do you really know about it?”
“Told you, one of the things I'm going to use the dough for, study up on these electrical things. Hon, the private-eye business has changed. Now it's finding out for CBS what new programs NBC has in mind. Big-money stuff. Ted Bailey gave me the lowdown today.”
“I suppose these big concerns are waiting to give the business to you—a black boy?”
“Seems to me I landed this new assignment just because I am coloured.” I don't like light-skinned people, even Sybil, calling me black.
“Touie Moore, all the time I've known you, you've been rubbing pennies together. If you weren't living in that dump with those other two no-goods, you'd have been on the street most of the time. Only real job you have is that department-store weekend thing, gives you a great big twenty a week. Bouncer, guard—how degrading can you get? Let's face it, you paid tax on seventeen hundred dollars last year. I never could understand why you insist on sticking to your badge. You're personable, well dressed, you could have made double that as a sales clerk. You told me yourself this Sid offered you such a job. But no, Dick Tracy has to keep on playing cops and robbers.”
“At least my time was my own, and now it's going to pay off.”
“What time was your own? Staying up all night at dances, holding up drunks, getting vomited on? You took all these civil-service exams because you know in your heart detective work is a blind alley.”
I set up the bridge table as she took out the dishes, opened a bottle of beer. “Sybil, I'm not saying it's been easy, or that I can make it. But neither am I rushing into carrying mail for the rest of my life. I want to think it over, carefully.”
“Go ahead, but there's nothing to think about. And let's not argue while we eat. It's bad for the digestion.”
We ate listening to radio music and I was mixed up. I could understand her point; hell, she'd been making triple my income for years. Still, I couldn't dismiss the agency idea as if Miss Robbens had never been in my office.
While I washed the dishes Sybil went into the large closet she called a dressing room, and which at one time had been the pantry of the house. I was sitting on the couch, lighting my pipe, when Sybil stepped out in a long lacy nothing, modeling it for my benefit. She came over, tripping like a Maltese kitten, sat on my lap, gently pulled the pipe from my mouth and planted a long hot kiss.
Sybil and I were most compatible, but now it left me cold. I was getting the full treatment, very full. I lifted her off my lap, dropped her beside me. Her eyes were big with surprise, maybe mocking me. I said, “Let's talk sense. You see, honey, another thing I thought we could do with the money is get married.”
“We'll get married the day you're appointed a regular carrier.”
I puffed on my pipe hard. If you can't get a doctor or undertaker, marry a civil-service worker, live in the Installment rut. “I asked you to marry me a year ago; why did you say no? Be honest.”
“I wasn't sure I was in love with you.”
“Honey, you haven't been seeing any other John, so that sounds phony to me. Was it because I'm dark?”
She shrugged. “Touie, what are you trying to make me say? All right, when I first knew you, I admit I didn't like the idea you were dark. But that certainly wasn't why I turned you down, why I'm doing it now. Touie, you know how hard it is for our people to land decent jobs, and when one does, she has to be careful—so many men want to marry her for a meal ticket.”
“That's stupid.”
“Touie Moore, don't you talk to me like that in my house! And it isn't stupid. You know what I went through with my louse of a husband. Seems when a man can't find himself, he finds me. I don't want—”
“I'm not your ex-husband.”
“And I never want you to be. Suppose we married now, you'd move in here and long as I kept my job you could play detective the rest of your life. I'm not saying you're lazy, Touie, because you're not. But we'd never get anyplace.”
“Where's 'anyplace,' Sybil?”
“You know what I mean; with a steady double income, we can live well. Touie, you're almost thirty-five. It's time you settled down. I know, the war ruined your chances for professional football, and the five or seven years you were an army officer—a nice vacation. This is the first civil-service job you've been called for; you simply can't pass it up!”
“You sound like I'm on relief.”
“You want honest talk? You aren't far from relief. Ollie carries your rent, I feed you. The Jaguar, the good clothes —that's all empty front.”
That hit me like a jab to the stomach. “And what the devil is living in a swank apartment, joining these dicty social clubs, the drunken dances, but a front? Sybil, the main thing is our being together. Marriage has to be more than a money partnership.”
“Movie dialogue, Touie, white movie dialogue. What's wrong in wanting to live in a new apartment? God knows I've lived in enough old rooms and run-down flats!”
“Nothing. I'm sick of hand-me-down apartments too. If my agency goes over big, if we give it a chance, we could live like that.”
“That's a dream; a post-office check is real.” She yawned, raised her arms and stretched with a soft lazy motion. “Don't argue, Touie. My goodness, if it makes you happy, keep the detective agency going in your spare time.”
I was too restless to sit, I walked around the room, flexing my muscles. The trouble was, Sybil was right; I did have a romantic conception of marriage. Still, she was making it too much cold turkey—now that I had the P.O. job she'd let me in as a full partner.
Sybil was watching me through half-closed eyes. With a catlike movement she stretched out on the couch, her arms under her head. “Think it over for a day or two; you'll see I'm right. Come here, muscles. Come over here.”
It was too corny. “I'm too tense for sleep.”
She gave me a knowing smile that said I was being silly; that I knew I'd come to her. “Then get me a cover. I'll get some sleep. I'm working overtime tonight.”
I covered her with a blanket, turned and walked over to the window. She called me once, softly, then a few minutes later she was sleeping. Sybil could sleep any time. I swung the TV around, tuned it in low, watched some overbright comic for a while. I felt lousy. Maybe it wasn't love, but I wanted to marry her. Was it wrong to also expect some sparkle instead of a merger of salary checks? Was that kid stuff? Might even take a honeymoon when Sybil had her vacation, fly out to L.A. and see my mother, who was living with my older sister and the stuffed-shirt dentist she'd married.
I went over to Sybil's dresser, got some stationery, wrote Ma a short letter, enclosed two twenties—first time I'd sent her money in a year. I didn't have a stamp. I quietly went through Sybil's bag and found one. At four I washed up, considered shaving, changed my shirt, and took off. After making sure the Jaguar was locked, I rode the subway downtown. I had to take Robert Thomas home and put him to bed, and it's impossible to tail anybody with a car in New York City.
I was in a real funk. It wasn't just thinking about Sybil that made me so blue. Another faint thought had been knocking at the back of my mind all afternoon: I'd always drawn the line at fink work and here I was... doing what? A lousy human bloodhound tracking a joker who had jammed himself years ago but seemed to have straightened out. I was getting set to send him to jail.... For the sake of justice? No, in order to sell more cereal or pimple cream, or whatever this TV sponsor peddled.
3
TRAILING a person in a five-o'clock rush is candy. Thomas was wearing an old windbreaker over his blue sweat shirt and a knitted cap. He was in a big rush. After grabbing a fast sandwich and cup of coffee at the same dump where he ate lunch, he actually ran to the subway. It was packed and I let myself be crushed into the same car he was riding, but at the other end. Looking over the heads of the other passengers, I kept the knit cap in view.
Thomas-Tutt wasn't going home. He got off at downtown Brooklyn and raced up the steps of an old squat building that was dark except for the lights of a trade school on the second floor. Making a note of the address and time, I went across the street and leaned against a building. Almost all the nearby stores were shut and the neighborhood was quiet, empty of people—especially coloured people. I got my pipe going. Although I couldn't see Thomas, I saw other young fellows working on the second floor. Some sort of electrical work; there were frequent flashes and sparks.
A young cop came by, swinging his club. He looked Italian. I tried to recall why I hadn't taken the police exam. Probably over-age. He glanced at me casually and I knew what he was thinking—what's this Negro hanging around here for? Only he wasn't thinking the word Negro. If I'd been roughly dressed, he probably would have asked me.
