“Coney Island red-hot places,” Skender said. “I start out, I save eighty-three dollars and thirty-four cents a month. The end of a year I have one thousand dollars. I buy a HUD house, fix it up and rent it to people. I keep saving eighty-three dollars and thirty-four cents a month. I buy another house, fix it up. Then I sell the first house and buy a Coney Island. I buy another house, more houses, fix them up, sell some of them, buy an apartment, buy another Coney Island. In twelve years I have two apartments now I keep for rent and four Coney Island red-hot places.”
Sandy reached over to touch Skender’s arm, looking at Clement. “Hasn’t he got a cute accent?”
Clement said, “Yeah, I ‘magine you’re paying Uncle Sam a chunk, too.”
Skender shrugged. “Yes, I pay. But I have money.”
“You ever been married?”
“No, thirty-four years old, I never marry. My cousin Toma and my grandfather, the houseman, the head of the family, they try to get me to marry
someone from Tuzi, in Yugoslavia, bring her over here to marry. But I say no and make them very angry, because I want to marry an American girl.”
Clement was listening intently, leaning over the table on his arms. He said, “I know what you mean, partner. Nice American girl… knows how to fix herself up, shaves under her arms… uses a nice perfume, various deodorants and flavors”-winking at Skender-“if you know what I mean. See,” Clement said, “I don’t mean to get personal with you, but I got to look out for sis here or I swear our mom’ll come storming back from wherever she’s at and give me the dickens. I said to her, Sandy-didn’t I?-it’s entirely up to you. But if this fella is sincere he won’t mind satisfying some of my natural curiousity and concern. I said, after all, if you’re gonna be Mrs. Lulgurri…”
Sandy rolled her eyes.
Skender said, “Lulgjaraj. It’s a very common name. When I look in the telephone book I see there are more Lulgjaraj than Mansell. I look hard, I don’t see your name. Another question I have, you don’t mind, if you sister and brother, why do you have different names?”
“One thing,” Clement said, “you can look at us and tell we both got shook out of the same tree, can’t you? Well, it’s a pretty interesting story how Sandy come to change her name… while she was out in Hollywood, was right after the Miss Universe contest…”
Skender was nodding, smiling. “Yes?” Sandy was sitting back in her chair, rolling her eyes.
Clement stopped. “I’ll tell you, I sure like a man with a natural smile like you got. It shows good character traits.” Clement stared hard at Skender, nodding slowly, thoughtfully, as Skender smiled, the smile becoming fixed in an awkward, almost pained expression.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Clement said. “I’ve been all over this country, coast to coast wherever my work as a speculator takes me, but believe it or not, you’re my first Albanian… Where you living now, Skenny?”
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.