Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (48 page)

“It’s saving his life. We keep it until he’s in Cuba, then he sends for it. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“It’s piss money,” Quinn said. “Shit money.”

“But money. Much money, free money.”

“If they trace it to him you’ll look like the head of his syndicate. So will I.”

“All we do is hide one suitcase. We could bury it in the woods.”

“I buried a treasure when I was a kid. A week later I went to dig it up and it was gone.”

“I’ll divide it up, put it in different safe deposit boxes.”

“All under your own name?”

“So put it behind one of our walls, make a new wall.”

“I don’t want it in the house.”

“Are you saying no to Max? Are you saying no to me?”

“I’m saying he should find another patsy to mind his loot. It’s a lousy thing to do to you. To us.”

“He is a fugitive. You want him to go to jail? Do you hate Max so much?”

“Aiding a fugitive, another felony.”

“So you are forbidding me to do this?”

Max came toward them.

“Where’s your goddamn car?” Quinn said to him.

“Just outside,” Max said. “Very close.”

“I love you, Quinn,” Renata said.

She led them out onto State Street where she had parked the Coronet.

“Do you have to take anything out of the suitcase?” Quinn asked Max.

“Shirts and socks, a shaving kit. I’ll put them in my briefcase.”

“How much is in the suitcase?”

“More than nine hundred thousand.”

“What if it turns out to be six hundred?”

“We can count it. Most of it’s wrapped and marked.”

“We’ll count it,” Quinn said. But where? The town is crawling with police. Not even the dark side streets are safe. Inside someplace. How long does it take to count to a million? I’m hungry. I want to hear Cody play.

“We’ll use the house of a friend of mine. He’s probably home and his street’s quiet. Renata will ride with me, you follow and park where I do and bring in the suitcase.”

Quinn felt a warm loathing for Max the lech, the fugitive dilettante in solitude, the running man as victim of his appetites, hung with unwieldy riches, pursued as an outlaw for having his face on the big screen.

“Being in that movie was pretty stupid, Max.”

“The lure of the Rialto, my boy, the lure of the Rialto.”

“You really think you belong on the Rialto, Max?”

“No, but I’ve always been addicted to it.”

“What’ll you do in Cuba?”

“Try to stay out of jail. After that I’ll think of something else.”

“You do know how to get to Canada.”

“I do.”

“We don’t want your fifty thousand.”

“Now that’s truly absurd. It means nothing to me and you’re broke.”

“I’m bent, not broke, and that’s all right. We don’t want it.”

“Suit yourself.”

Quinn’s friend, Jesse Franklin, a regular at Claudia’s Better Streets group, lived on Philip Street with Malinda, his bride of six months, who spoke in hoarse whispers. Quinn had been at their wedding. Jesse was ninety, the son of a slave, built like a fence post, did back work all his life, the only work an illiterate was fit for, man of a thousand ailments, none of which impeded his drive toward self-improvement and the big one-oh-oh. He had just earned a certificate for perfect attendance at a night class in reading and writing. Malinda was his fifth wife. Three he buried and one ran off, but he kept accumulating, didn’t want to live alone, first wife got so big with the water dropsy she couldn’t move. They took forty-five pounds of water out of her one time, thirty-five pounds another. When Jesse saw her in the hospital she’d lost so much weight he didn’t know her. Malinda was sixty with a game leg, and was, like Jesse, a regular at Better Streets meetings. They matched up and now survived on two dollars a day from Social Security, his welfare and her disability checks, and congenial love. Jesse opened the door to welcome Quinn.

“You see any riots around here tonight, Jess?”

“I told ’em go over to the next block if they need to riot.”

Quinn explained Max was passing through, needed someplace quiet to take some medicine and change clothes before he got back on the road. “And I thought of your kitchen,” Quinn said.

“My kitchen’s your kitchen,” Jesse said.

Quinn left Renata in the front room to entertain Jesse and his bride, then he closed the kitchen door and toted up with Max, who was right: the cash was in hundreds, marked and counted: nine hundred and the loose seventy thousand, very little room for shirts. Max put a shirt, socks and shaving gear into his briefcase. Quinn crammed Max’s leftover shirts and socks into one of Jesse’s paper bags. Max picked up two packs of fifty thousand, put one in his briefcase, and marked the other with a
Q
and handed it to Quinn, who hefted it, decided it felt like a pound of coffee. He pulled a hundred out from under the
Q
wrapper and dropped the pack back into the suitcase.

“This is for our use of the kitchen,” he said to Max, who closed and locked the suitcase and gave Quinn the key. Quinn lifted the bag, heavier than a bowling ball. He left it for Max to carry and went to the living room.

“Many thanks for the use of the room, Jess. My friend is very grateful.” He handed Jesse the folded bill.

Quinn kissed Malinda’s hand and said thank you. Jesse unfolded the hundred, held it up to the light and said to Quinn, “He want that kitchen for the whole month this’ll cover it.”

“He’s got other plans. I’ll see you for lunch one of these days, Jess.”

Quinn checked the street, nobody walking, nobody in any windows. He opened the trunk of his ’59 Mercedes 220S and gestured to Max to bring the bag. Max lifted it in and Quinn spread his blanket over the treasure, which immediately began to pulsate and exude gamma rays.

“Where will you park it?” Max asked.

“That no longer concerns you, does it?”

“I suppose not.”

“It’s my problem. You have other problems.”

“I’m incredibly grateful to both of you for this, and I mean that with every bone in my head. The fifty is yours, all yours, period, end of argument.”

“That’s unbelievable generosity,” Renata said.

“Thanks but no thanks, Max,” Quinn said.

“Call me if anything goes wrong,” Renata said.

Max kissed her on the forehead, nodded at Quinn, and they watched him drive away.

“Where will you park it?” she asked.

“The old Albany Garage, just down from the DeWitt. In the twenties it was a drop for the Albany machine’s bootleggers bringing booze from Canada. That’s a nice bit of symmetry, don’t you think, parking Max’s contraband there while he slinks off to Canada? It also reminds me of riding in Diego’s car with you after the Palace attack. You were driving and the car had a trunkful of guns. I thought you were a crazy lady. And I was right.”

“But you fell in love with me.”

“I’d already done that at the Floridita.”

“And so did I.”

“But then what happened?”

“We ran away.”

“We eloped and got married and didn’t have a honeymoon.”

“We had a honeymoon before we got married.”

“There was somebody else in the bed that night.”

“He was dead.”

“And somebody had beaten me to the bed when I caught up with you in Miami.”

“Max is nothing to me, nothing!” She raised her voice on this one. “He saved my life! What is one night with him? It’s like having a drink at the bar. It’s
nada, nada, nada
!”

“That’s why you’re saving his ass and minding his hot money.”

“
Coño,
Quinn,
coño.
You are
un bobo.
”

“Plus he gives you fifty thousand for his latest excursion into your pants.”

“Do you know what fifty thousand is? Do you know what it could mean to us? Do you know how much money we do not have?”

“You command a high fee. But I didn’t marry you for your money.”

“Stop the car.”

He stopped, half a block from the Albany Garage on a dark one-way street.

“Lléname,”
she said. “Right now.” She raised her skirt and pulled off her panties. She backed against the car door, spread herself. “You are so worried about fucking. Fuck me now.”

“I haven’t had my dinner yet,” Quinn said.

He drove up the ramp into the garage, up to the seventh floor and parked near the stairs. There were no other cars on this level. Renata was still in position.

“What does your gesture mean, and this language? Is this a gesticulation toward intimacy? If I make the move is that a decree of irrevocable possession? Is your offer made in good faith or is it meant to change the subject?”

“I said in the hotel that I loved you. Did you hear me say that?”

“I did.”

“I have not said that in a long time.”

“Neither have I.”

“Do you no longer love me?”

“It’s very hard to say.”

“Try to say it.”

“I find it very difficult to love you.”

“But do you?”

“Well, somehow, somehow, yes, though I often think of it as my misfortune.”

“But it is love. You still know what love is. It is still love.”

“Such as it is, it still seems to be love.”

“Then show me your misfortune. This is a night like we have never had. You don’t understand that yet, but I do. I see you more clearly than ever. I know you. Put your misfortune into me.”

Quinn shifted his weight toward her and stared her down. “All right,” he said, “but I’m not paying for this.”

They were nine at a table for eight, the chicken dinners of all but Roy in shreds and bones, and two new bottles of wine and another round for the Schlitz drinkers were on the table, ordered by Quinn. George and Vivian, Matt and Martin, then Tremont straggled in, Roy and Gloria arrived half an hour later, and Quinn and Renata finally returned after their disappearance, but without Max. Cody was at the piano, and he paused to say now he wanted to do a piece he’d written and recorded in memory of Fats Waller. He called it “Blues for Fats,” who was a brilliant musician and funny and lived to play, too hard, played around the clock and kept going, dead at thirty-nine from an overdose of life. Cody had started this tune as an improvisation of what he’d felt about the man, then kept it going like Fats at a party, meditating on his early death and the depth of his talent, keeping it slow; but the piece got longer, eight choruses, right hand wailing melancholy arpeggios in the high register, Fats liked Bach, and then a last low chord and fade, the way Fats did. Cody stood up from the piano and the applause was wild, long, real, and it put a smile on his face that did not fade. He said he was going to cool out but he’d be back.

Mike Flanagan and his group moved back in, launched “If I Could Be with You” and people danced. Cody tried table-hopping to thank his roomful of friends but at the second table he felt weak and had to sit. Roy went to his table and touched his shoulder. Cody grabbed his hand and stood and gripped his arm. “You got out,” Cody said, and his smile grew larger as they moved to a corner where Roy gave his father the news.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” Matt said when Roy came back to the table. “You had a rough night.”

“This is Cody’s night. I thought I’d miss him.”

“What’d they charge you with?”

“Participating in a riot. The lawyer says they want me for inciting riot, that I told those guys at the Four Spot the cops had shotguns but I could get them guns to fight back.”

“I was there. I didn’t hear you say that.”

“Albany cops do their thing. In the last eight months they busted all ten members of the Brothers’ Council, me and Ben twice, and we both did time. Not one of the charges was worth a damn and most of them were thrown out, but they keep it up. Harass those mothers and maybe they’ll go away.”

“Maybe they confused you with Zuki. He could’ve come up with some guns.”

“That son of a bitch has a lot to answer for.”

“I gave him an act of penance down on Bleecker Street. I bloodied his nose. He was giving heat to Tremont.”

“Best news I heard all day.”

“Did you hear Tremont broke up a riot on Bleecker Street?” Quinn asked Roy.

“I heard he misbehaved,” Roy said.

“Whites in cars came through with Molotovs and got trapped, people hacking, kicking one another, knives, wrecked cars, two or three houses on fire, and then Tremont walks out of the alley, unwraps his AR-15 and bang bangety bang—‘Enough,’ Tremont says, and the riot falls apart. People run off, cops arrive, not much left for them to do, but they arrest a dozen and carry off the wounded. I think Tremont saved lives. The AR-15 is his musical instrument of choice. You can’t predict Tremont. At the First Church he serenaded the protesters with ‘Coon, Coon, Coon, I Wish My Color Would Fade.’”

“I remember that,” Martin said. “Nineteen-oh-one. A huge hit.”

George sang the second line:

“Coon, coon, coon, I want a different shade . . .”

“We don’t have to sing it, Pop,” Quinn said. “I thought they’d strangle Tremont so I got him out quicktime.”

“They wouldn’ta strangled me,” Tremont said.