Skender went to the Men’s as they got ready to leave. Clement said to Sandy, “I wasn’t able to get a gun.”
She seemed nervous now, which surprised Clement, and said, “Be nice. You don’t have to do it tonight.”
Clement said, “Hell I don’t. I got seven dollars to my name and no place to sleep.”
Clement stayed close behind Skender’s black Cadillac, not letting any traffic get between them: straight down Woodward from Royal Oak into Detroit, east on the Davison Freeway to Joseph Campau and a ride down Hamtramck’s main drag, then a right at Caniff to head west, back toward Woodward, Clement thinking, This bird doesn’t even know how to get home. He turned a corner and parked behind the Cadillac in front of a U-shaped, three-story apartment building, 2781 Cardoni.
Skender told them he had been in this place four years. He had moved in right after his brother was shot and killed. Clement paid attention, looking away from the street signs in the light on the corner, and followed Skender and Sandy into the building.
Say he was shot? Clement asked and found out, yes, by a member of another family. It was a long boring story that Clement didn’t understand, something about an argument in a bar leading to the shooting of the brother, then a cousin and two from the other family were killed before some guy came over from Yugoslavia and settled the matter.
On the stairway Clement asked Skender if he had shot the two from the other family. But Skender didn’t hear him or else ignored the question, telling Sandy, yes, he still lived on the first floor. Sandy wanted to know why they were going up to the second floor then. Skender said wait and see.
Clement couldn’t picture this skinny camel-jockey-looking guy shooting anybody anyway.
He seemed to make a ceremony of unlocking the front apartment on the right and stepping back for them to enter. It was a big apartment. Clement was struck by the newness of everything. He thought it looked like a store display and found out he wasn’t far wrong.
“For my new bride,” Skender said, smiling, showing white teeth and gold caps in the light-Clement getting a good look at him for the first time-Skender sweeping the cowboy hat from his head to present the room, “Decorated with the Mediterranean suit by Lasky Furniture on Joe Campau”-Skender, Clement judged, going about five-nine, a hundred and thirty, maybe shorter, his hair giving him height-Skender showing them the master bedroom then, the other bedroom that would be a sewing room-Clement giving Sandy a nudge-the pink and green bathroom, the fully-equipped kitchen, ice-maker in the refrigerator, two bottles of slivovitz chilled for the surprise celebration…
Sandy looked surprised all right. She said, “Gee, it’s really nice.”
Clement wasn’t in any hurry. He let her walk around the apartment touching wild-animal figurines and the petals of the plastic tulip lamps, looking at the twin stardust-upholstered recliner chairs, looking at the painting of the big-eyed little girl and what looked like a real tear coming down her cheek, while Skender opened a bottle of slivovitz and brought it out to them with his fingers stuck in three stem glasses and the cowboy hat on the back of his head.
Clement kept calling Sandy sis. Saying, “Hey, you’re gonna love this place, aren’t you, sis?” Or, “How ’bout that sewing room, sis? God darn but he’s a thoughtful fella, isn’t he?” He said, “Man, this is choice stuff,” and got Skender to open the second bottle, Clement deciding it tasted something like bitter mule piss, but he wanted the Albanian good and relaxed. Near the bottom of the second bottle he said, “Now what’s this about a secret room somewhere? I hope it ain’t for locking sis in when she’s pouty or mean…” Sandy appeared to sigh with relief.
It was about the cleanest basement Clement had ever seen, with separate locked stalls for each of the building’s twelve tenants, a big furnace that was like a ship’s boiler with aluminum ducts coming out of it and running along the ceiling, cinderblock walls painted light green…
Skender said, “Now watch, please.”
As though Clement was going to look anywhere else-as Skender reached up to what looked like a metal fuse box mounted high on the wall by the furnace, opened it and snapped a switch to the “up” position. Clement heard a motor begin to hum; he located it in the overhead and followed an insulated wire over to a section of cinderblock wall. About three feet of the wall, from cement floor to unfinished ceiling, was groaning on unseen metal hinges, coming open right before his eyes, the motor high-pitched now, straining to actuate the massive load. Son of a gun…
The room inside was about ten-by-twelve. Clement stepped inside saying out loud, “I’ll be a son of a gun.” He saw the floor safe right away. About two feet high, with a telephone and a phone book sitting on top. There was an office-model refrigerator that contained a two-burner range, a record player on a stand, a half-dozen folded-up canvas chairs, a pile of sleeping bags, a table with a sugar bowl on it, prints on the wall of a white seaside village, one of Jesus showing his Sacred Heart and one with a lot of funny looking words Clement couldn’t read. Behind a folding door was a smaller room with a sink and toilet and shelves stocked with canned goods.
As Clement looked around, Skender turned on the record player. In a moment Donna Summer was coming on loud, filling the cinderblock room with disco music from one of her Greatest Hits.
Clement tried to ignore the sound. He said, “My oh my oh my. You play house down here or you hide for real?”
Skender, smiling, said, “I’m sorry. What?”
“I heard of Eye-talians going to the mattresses-how come I never heard of you people?”
“Specially since you read so much,” Sandy said.
Clement grinned at her. Little bugger, she was loosening up. That was good; they’d have some fun. He had said to her many times, as he did now, “If it ain’t fun, it ain’t worth doing, is it?”
She said, “You want me to leave?”
“Hell no, I don’t want you to leave. Do we?” Looking over at Skender and seeing him kneeling down at the safe now, opening it-the safe wasn’t even locked-and shoving a window envelope inside he had taken out of his inside coat pocket.
Right before your very eyes, Clement thought. You believe it? He would love to be able to tell this later on. Maybe to Sweety. Watch his old nigger face…
He said, “Hey, brother-in-law”-feeling a nice glow from the plum brandy and the bourbon he’d had before-“what you got in that box there?” The music wasn’t too bad…
“I keep some money, some things.” Skender drew an automatic out of the safe, held it up for Clement to see. Clement stepped over hesitantly, reached out and let Skender hand the gun to him. He felt Sandy watching, gave her a quick glance.
“This here’s a Browning.”
“Yes, and this one is a Czech seven-six-five. This little one is a Mauser. This one, I think, yes, is a Smith and Wesson. This one… I don’t know what it is.” Skender was laying the pistols on the floor next to the safe.
Clement released the clip from the Browning, looked at it and punched it back into the grip. “You keep ’em all loaded?”
“Yes, of course,” Skender said.
“What else you got in there?”
“No more guns. I keep some money…”
“How much?”
Skender looked up at him now, for a moment hesitant, then reached up quickly to keep the cowboy hat from falling down his back. “I put some in last week. I think now… four hundred, a little more.”
“Four hundred,” Clement said. He waited. “Four hundred, huh?”
“A little more.”
“How much more?”
“Maybe fifty dollars.”
Clement frowned. “You keep money in the bank?”
Skender hesitated again.
Sandy said, “It’s okay, he won’t tell nobody.”
“In a saving certificate,” Skender said, taking the envelope out again and opening it to look at a pink deposit receipt, “forty thousand three hundred and forty-three dollars.”