This kind of gloom made him feel anonymous. Who was he? Why should anyone care about him?
He drove around a while, then stopped at a bakery and bought a cheesecake. He took it to the Police and Courts Building and rode the elevator to three. He stuck his head in a few offices and took the cake to the press room. Four or five clerks and detectives came in. Jack took a Preludin with a mouthful of cold coffee that was sitting in a paper cup. Somebody noticed the stub where Jack's index finger used to be. A little accident in the nature of an old-time dispute. He told two jokes that went over well. Then he went down the hall to Homicide and looked in on Russell Shively, who was at his desk reading Field and Stream, a lanky type with a sunburnt face who always made Jack feel here is my corny idea of a Texas lawman.
"Russell, how long we known each other?"
"Hell, I don't know."
"Have I ever mentioned suicide to you?"
"I don't believe so, Jack."
"Russell, if I ever mention suicide or the phrase kill myself or do away with myself, I am telling you right now it is not an empty threat to get attention. If you ever pick up the phone and hear a voice that says I'm killing myself and you think it's my voice, Jack Ruby, then I'm telling you right now I'm not bluffing."
These remarks came out of nowhere, of course, so Russell Shively just looked carefully into Jack's eyes and nodded, with no idea what to say.
Jack put his snap-brim fedora back on his head and walked out of the room. He went down to the car and drove off toward the Carousel. He thought of some calls he had to make. Bottles and jars rolled across the floor of the car. He thought of the fight that led to the stub finger. A dozen years ago he had a fight of a total animal nature with a guitar player at the Silver Spur, which Jack was running at the time. The guitarist bit off part of his left index finger. It was a single, sustained and determined head-wagging bite in the course of a stretch of wrestling and it left the top part of the finger hanging, beyond repair. This was harmful to Jack's public image because he wanted to join the Masons, the Freemasons, whatever they're called, for the business contacts and the fellowship. But the Masons would not accept a man who was missing part of his anatomy. This was an ancient bylaw that they kept in the books.
He called his attorney.
He called the Morning News about an ad for the club.
He called a stripper named Janet Alvord.
"Do I look swishy to you, Janet? What about my voice? People tell me there's a lisp. Is this the way a queer sounds to a neutral person? Do you think I'm latent or what? Could I go either way?
Don't pee on my legs, Janet. I want the total truth."
The bartender was here. Jack complained that the bar glasses were not clean enough to suit him. He spotted the new waitress, who walked in wearing a low-cut ruffled blouse. He took her into a corner and told her a joke. She had a rumbling laugh. He told another quick one and walked off fast, looking back at her laughing in the corner.
He liked a woman with a freckled cleavage.
He went down to the car and drove home for an early dinner. Because what is it like to be a Jew in a place, in a state like Texas? You feel to yourself don't ever speak out, don't ever stand out. But he loved this city. It made him a living in his own way. He didn't have to hide what he was. He didn't have to listen to Jewish jokes from the MC at the club. The MC knew one Jewish joke could land him in Emergency. No complaints. It's just the little feeling you get sometimes there's some secret thing they're shielding. He grew up in the neighborhoods, the crosstown wars. What was Dallas next to that? He used to come home with blood on his clothes for sticking up for the Jewish race. He met his sisters at the streetcar stop in Dago Town to make sure nobody catcalled Jew-girl at them, or walked close behind smacking their lips, or put a hand on them. No complaints. It's just the impression of you're off to the side. But he had friends on the force. He liked to give a loan to a young cop with a new baby. Plainclothes officers came to the club. How many cities could he name where a Jew can walk into police headquarters and he hears, Hello, how are you, it's Jack. I owe my life to this town.
George said they were having spaghetti tonight.
"I thought tonight was a broiled haddock."
"Where?"
"Didn't I come home with haddock-when was it?"
"I don't know," George said.
Jack took a Preludin with some leftover juice.
"Ask me I'm unhappy."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning with reference to what he said."
"No loan."
"They're getting ready to padlock my clubs."
"You take too many of those things, Jack."
"They're medically an obesity drug."
"Nobody's that fat."
"I need the stimuli," Jack said.
He took the newspapers he'd bought that morning and went into the toilet. All Jack's reading took place in the toilet. It was the best part of his day. He read the nightlife, the ads for the clubs, the local tidbits, the entertainment column. There were the shows around town. He checked the competition. His mind settled down when he was crapping. There was a restfulness and calm.
Later he stood in the kitchen talking to George.
He didn't want to reach the point again where he had to sleep at the club. There was a time not long ago when he didn't have a place to live. He was between apartments with not a lot of ready cash to maneuver. He slept at the club. He lived there, ate there, slept in a foldout bed in a back room next to the room with the dogs. His whole life conducted under one roof. A stink of beer and cigarettes and dog and what-have-you. That was the second-worst period after the Cotton Bowl Hotel, where he sat in the dark for eight weeks. He refused to go down to that level again. Of no place to live. Of totally outside the norm.
George said you can tell when the spaghetti's cooked by picking a strand out of the boiling water and flinging it against the wall. If it sticks, it's done.
Jack ate quickly and set out for the club in his bouncing Olds-mobile.
Guy Banister sat in his ottice after dark, the old lion head sunk in thought. Some bum was urinating in the street, drilling the wall of the building. The desk lamp was on. Guy picked up his file on the Red Chinese. It was the file he saved for quiet times of day, the final nightmare file, to be brooded over slowly. Red Chinese troops are being dropped into the Baja by the fucking tens of thousands. Mobilizing, massing, growing. Little red stars on their caps.
In fact there was nothing new in the file. The same old rumors and suspicions. They are down there in the pale sands in their padded jackets, gathered in one great silent sweep, waiting for the word. It didn't need elaboration or update. There was something classic in the massing of the Chinese.
He wanted to believe it was true. He did believe it was true. But he also knew it wasn't. Ferrie told him it didn't matter, true or not. The thing that mattered was the rapture of the fear of believing. It confirmed everything. It justified everything. Every violence and lie, every time he'd cheated on his wife. It allowed him to collapse inside, to melt toward awe and dread. That's what Ferrie said. It explained his dreams. The Chinese caused his dreams. Every terror and queerness of sleep, every unspeakability-it is painted in China white.
Men floating down in white silk. He liked to think of an unmechanized mass, silent men gathering their chutes, concealed in the pale sands. This was not the missiles or the satellites, all that cocksure technology. The Chinese file contained the human swarm, in padded jackets, massing near the border. A fear to savor slowly.
The door opened and Ferrie walked in, breaking the reverie. He leaned against a wall eating french fries from a carton.
"I came to give a report. Not that you want to hear it."
"Where's Oswald?"
"Houston by now. I had Frank and Raymo take him. He'll get on a bus for Mexico City."