Go 'way, Reverend Wadson thought. Go 'way, we don' want no trouble wif you. But he said nothing.
The biggest of the three young men, who looked to be eighteen years old, tapped on the window near Ingrid's left ear.
She looked at him coolly, then rolled the window down two inches.
"Yes?"
"You lost, lady? We help you if you is lost,"
"I'm not lost, thank you."
"Then why you waiting here? Hah. Why you here?"
"I like it here."
"You waiting for a man, you doan have to waits no mo'. Now you gots three mens."
"Wonderful," Ingrid said. "Why don't we all make a date to meet sometime at the monkey house at the zoo?"
"Doan have to wait for no dates to meet wif us. We heah now and we ready for you." He turned to his two companions. "Ain' we ready for her?"
One nodded. The other said, "Oooooh, is we ever?"
"It's been nice talking to you boys. Good night," Ingrid said.
"Wait a minute. Ain' no boys you talking to. No boys. We's men. Where you getting that boys? You doan go doing no boying around heah. We's men. You want to see how big mens we is, we shows you."
He reached down to unzip his fly.
"Take it out and I'll take it off," Ingrid said.
"Take it out," said one of the other youths.
"Yeah. Take it out," said the other. "She 'fraid your black power. Show her your tower of power."
The first youth was confused now. He looked at Ingrid.
"Yo wanna see it?"
"No," she said. "I want your lips. I want your big beautiful lips to kiss."
The boy swelled up and smirked at his two friends. "Well, little foxy lady, ain' no trouble wiffen dat dere." He bent over and put his face toward the car. He puckered his lips in the two-inch opening at the top of the window.
Ingrid stuck Reverend Wadson's pearl-handled revolver into the big open mouth.
"Here, Sambo, suck on this for a while."
The young black man recoiled. "Sheeit," he said.
"Nice to meet you. My name's Ingrid."
"Dis bitch crazy," said the man, wiping the taste of the gun barrel from his mouth.
"This what?" Ingrid asked, pointing the barrel of the gun at the man's stomach.
"Ah sorry. Lady. Come on, boys, we go now. Yes'm, we go now."
"Have a nice day, nigger," Ingrid said.
She pointed the gun at him again as he moved back a step.
"Yes'm," he said. "Yes'm." He put an arm around the shoulder of one of his friends and moved quickly away from the car, careful to make sure that his friend was between him and the gun barrel.
Ingrid rolled up the window. Reverend Wadson breathed again. They had never seen him, hidden in the dark corner of the rear seat. Ingrid seemed content not to talk and Wadson decided not to try to get her to change her mind.
They waited in silence another ten minutes before Ingrid said, "All right. We can go up now." As Reverend Wadson got out of the car, she said, "Lock it up. Your friends may come back and eat the seats if you don't." She waited, then nodded to Wadson to lead the way down the street. She followed, her fingers on the red toggle switch of the little black box.
"Up here," she ordered as they passed in front of a three-story stone tenement. Wadson led the way up to the top floor. There was only one door on the floor and Ingrid pushed Wadson through it, into a large, spartan apartment where Tony Spesk, ne Colonel Speskaya, sat on a brown flowered sofa, reading Commentary Magazine with a thin smile on his pale face.
He nodded to Ingrid as she entered, and told Wadson to sit down in the chair facing the couch.
"You are here, Reverend Wadson, because we need your services."
"Who you?" Wadson asked.
Spesk grinned, a large wide smile. "We are the people who control your life. That's all you need to know."
With a sudden flash of inspiration, Wadson asked, "You communists?"
"You might say that," said Spesk.
"Ah communist too," said Wadson.
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. Ah believes in share and share alike. Equality. Nobody being rich ober de bodies ob de poor. Ah believes in dat."
"How droll," said Spesk. He stood up from the couch, carefully placing the magazine on one of the arms. "And what is your viewpoint of the Hegelian dichotomy?"
"Hah?" said Reverend Wadson.
"What do you think of the revolt of the sailors at Kronstadt?" Spesk asked. "The Menshevik heresy?"
"Hah?"
"Of course, you support the labor theory of value as modified by the research of Belchov?"
"Hah?"
"I hope, Reverend Wadson," Spesk said, "that you live to see the Communist victory. Because two days later, you'll be in a field picking cotton. Ingrid, call and make sure our other visitor is on his way."
Ingrid nodded and went from the large living room into a smaller room, closing the door behind her. Wadson noticed that she had placed the small black box on the arm of the couch near Spesk. His chance at last. An opening.
When the door had closed behind Ingrid, he smiled at Spesk.
"That one bad woman."
"Oh?" said Spesk.
"Yeah. She a racist. She hate black men. She committing a 'trocity on me."
"Too bad, Wadson. Next to me, she looks like Albert Schweitzer."
His eyes had a strange hard glint in them and while Reverend Wadson didn't know who Albert Schweitzer was, because he didn't pay too much attention to the comings and goings of Jews, he decided Spesk's comment pretty well sealed off the prospect of a counter-conspiracy against Ingrid. And the black box was still too far away.
"Listen, Mister…"
"Spesk. Tony Spesk."
"Well, listen Mr. Spesk, she got dis ring on me and it hurts. You fixing to let me loose?"
"A day or two if you behave yourself. Never, if you cause me any trouble."
"I causes you no trouble," Wadson said. "I be the least troubling man you ever likely to find."
"Good, because I need you for something. Sit on the floor and listen."
Wadson moved off the chair and lowered himself to the floor, carefully, as if he had raw eggs in his back pockets.
"There is a white man. He travels with an old Oriental. I want them."
"You gots dem. Where is they?"
"I don't know. I saw them down in your neighborhood. Near the house where that old woman, Mrs. Mueller, was killed."
Mrs. Mueller? Mrs. Mueller? That was the old woman the government was so interested in. They had been looking for something. And whatever it was Wadson had it. Her apartment had yielded only junk, but there was a strange-looking device that the Saxon Lords had brought Wadson to try to fence.
"I gots something better dan any white man and chink," Wadson said.
"What is that?"
"Dey was dis thing that the Missus Mueller had and the government, it was lookin' for."
"Yes."
"I got de ting."
"What is it?" Spesk said.
"Ah doan know. It some kind of ting that goes tick and tick, but ah doan knows what it's for."
"Where do you have it?"
"You takes de ring off, I tell you." Wadson tried a large friendly smile.
"You don't tell me and I'm going to take part of you off." Spesk reached out and lifted the small black box.
"Hold it, hold it, hold it raht theah. I got the dee-vice. I got it at my 'partment."
"Good. I want it. But more than that, I want the white man and the Oriental."
"I find dem. I get dem for you. What you want dem for?"
"They're weapons. Never mind. You wouldn't understand."
"You gonna take de ring off?"
"When you perform."
Wadson nodded glumly. Spesk took several steps back to the couch. He was limping heavily.
"What happen to you leg?"
"That's what I want to see the white man about," Spesk said.