Holding three drinks in one giant hand, he moved over to Betty and served her and then handed one to me.
“Did my partner come off a ship?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Which one?”
“Flyin a Liberian flag and believe it or not was out of Monrovia. She’s called the Frances Jane and was carryin cocoa mostly.”
“Mush wasn’t picking up a pound of cocoa.”
“Well, it was a little more’n a pound.”
“How’d it happen?”
“Mush was waitin to meet somebody off that boat and was just hangin around waitin for him when the two of them jumped him. Next thing he knows he’s lyin down and this friend of yours has done stepped in and was mixin with both of them. He doin fine till they start with the knives. One of them gets your friend in the ribs and by then Mush is back up and saps one of them and then they both take off. Your friend’s down and out so Mush goes through his pockets and comes up with your address and calls me. I tell him to hang around to see if he can make his meet and if he don’t connect in ten minutes, to come back to Washington and bring the white boy with him. He bled some on Mush’s car.”
“Tell him to send me a bill.”
“Shit, man, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“Mush’ll be back in a little while. He’ll take you and your buddy down to the hotel.”
“Fine.”
I got up and walked back into the bedroom. Padillo was still lying quietly in the bed. I stood there looking at him, holding my drink and smoking a cigarette. He stirred and opened his eyes. He saw me, nodded carefully, and then moved his eyes around the room.
“Nice bed,” he said.
“Have a good nap?”
“Pleasant. How bad am I?”
“You’ll be O.K. Where’ve you been?”
He smiled slightly, licked his lips, and sighed. “Out of town,” he said.
Hardman and I helped Padillo to dress. He had a white shirt that had been washed but not ironed, a pair of khaki pants in the same condition, a Navy pea jacket, and black shoes with white cotton socks.
“Who’s your new tailor?” I asked.
Padillo glanced down at his clothes. “Little informal, huh?”
“Betty washed ’em out in her machine,” Hardman said. “Blood hadn’t dried too much, so it came out easy. Didn’t get a chance to iron em.”
“Who’s Betty?”
“You’ve been sleeping in her bed,” I said.
“Thank her for me.”
“She’s in the next room. You can thank her yourself.”
“Can you walk?” Hardman said.
“Is there a drink in the next room along with Betty?”
“Sure.”
“I can walk.”
He could, although he moved slowly. I carried the forbidden shoes. Padillo paused at the door and put one hand on the jamb to brace himself. Then he walked on into the livingroom. “Thanks for the use of your bed, Betty,” he said to the tall brown girl.
“You’re welcome. How you feel?”
“A little rocky, but I think it’s mostly dope. Who bandaged me?”
“Doctor.”
“He give me a shot?”
“Uh-huh. Should be bout worn off.”
“Just about is.”
“Man wants a drink,” Hardman said. “What you like?”
“Scotch, if you have it,” Padillo said.
Hardman poured a generous drink and handed it to Padillo. “How’s yours, Mac?”
“It’s okay.”
“Mush’ll be here any minute,” Hardman said. “He’ll take you down to the hotel.”
“Where am I staying?” Padillo asked.
“At your suite in the Mayflower.”
“My suite?”
“I booked it in your name and it’s paid for monthly out of your share of the profits. It’s small — but quietly elegant. You can take it off your income tax if you ever get around to filing it.”
“How’s Fredl?”
“We got married.”
“You’re lucky.”
Hardman looked at his watch. “Mush’ll be here any minute,” he said again.
“Thanks for all your help — yours and Betty’s,” Padillo said.
Hardman waved a big hand. “You saved us having a big razzoo in Baltimore. What you mess in that for?”
Padillo shook his head slowly. “I didn’t see your friend. I just turned a corner and there they were. I thought they were after me. Whichever one had the knife knew how to use it.”
“You off that boat?” Hardman said.
“Which one?”
“The Frances Jane.”
“I was a passenger.”
“Didn’t run across a little old Englishman, name of Landeed, about fifty or fifty-five, with crossed eyes?”
“I remember him.”
“He get off the boat?”
“Not in Baltimore,” Padillo said. “His appendix burst four days out of Monrovia. They stored him away in the ship’s freezer.”
Hardman frowned and swore. He put heart into it. The chimes rang and Betty went to open the door and admitted a tall Negro dressed in a crow-black suit, white shirt, and dark maroon tie. He wore sunglasses at two-thirty in the morning.
“Hello, Mush,” I said.
He nodded at me and the nod took in Betty and Hardman. He crossed over to Padillo. “How you feeling?” His voice was precise and soft.
“Fine,” Padillo said.
“This is Mustapha Ali,” Hardman told Padillo. “He’s the cat that brought you down from Baltimore. He’s a Black Muslim, but you can call him Mush. Everybody else does.”
Padillo looked at Mush. “Are you really a Muslim?”
“I am,” the man said gravely.
Padillo said something in Arabic. Mush looked surprised, but responded quickly in the same language. He seemed pleased.
“What you talkin, Mush?” Hardman asked.
“Arabic.”
“Where you learn Arabic?”
“Records, man, records. I’ll need it when I get to Mecca.”
“You the goddamndest cat I ever seen,” Hardman said.
“Where’d you learn Arabic?” Mush asked Padillo.
“From a friend.”
“You speak it real good.”
“I’ve had some practice lately.”
“We’d better get you to the hotel,” I told Padillo. He nodded and stood up slowly.
“Thanks very much for all your help,” he said to Betty. She said it was nothing and Hardman said he would see me tomorrow at lunch. I nodded, thanked Betty, and followed Padillo out to Mush’s car. It was a new Buick, a big one, and had a telephone in the front and a five-inch Sony television in the back.
“I want to stop by my place on the way to the hotel,” I said to Mush. “It won’t take long.”
He nodded and we drove in silence. Padillo stared out the window. “Washington’s changed,” he said once. “What happened to the streetcars?”
“Took ’em off in ’sixty-one,” Mush said.
Fredl and I lived in one of those new brick and glass apartments that have blossomed just south of Dupont Circle in a neighborhood that once was made up of three- and four-story rooming houses that catered to students, waiters, car washers, pensioners, and professional tire changers. Speculators tore down the rooming houses, covered the ground with asphalt, and called them parking lots for a while. When enough parking lots were put together, the speculators would apply for a government-insured loan, build an apartment house, and call it The Melanie or The Daphne after a wife or a girl friend. The rents for a two-bedroom apartment in those places were based on the supposition that both husband and wife were not only richly employed, but lucky in the stockmarket.
Nobody ever seemed to care what had happened to the students, waiters, car washers, pensioners and the professional tire changers.
Mush parked the car in the circular driveway where it said no parking and we rode the elevator up to the eighth floor.