“Who’s that for?” I said. “Eh?”
“Schmidt,” said Raymond. I walked over to where they were. I brought up a bunch of stuff from deep down in my throat and spit real good into that plate. Raymond put a spoon in the stew and stirred it up.
“I better take it out to him,” I said, “before it gets cold.”
“Don’t forget the garnish,” said Raymond.
He put a flower of parsley on the plate, turning it a little so it looked nice. I took the stew out and served it to Schmidt. I watched him take the first bite and nod his head like it was good. None of the colored guys said nothing to me about it again.
I got drunk with John Petersen in a saloon a coupla nights after and told him what I’d done. I thought he’d a get a good laugh out of it, but instead he got serious. He put his hand on my arm the way he did when he wanted me to listen. “Stay out of Schmidt’s way,” said John.
“Ah,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “He gives me any trouble, I’m gonna punch him in the kisser.” The beer was making me brave.
“Just stay out of his way.”
“I look afraid to you?”
“I’m telling you, Schmidt is no waiter.”
“I know it. He’s the worst goddamn waiter I ever seen. Maybe you ought to have one of those meetings of yours and see if you can get him thrown out.”
“Don’t ever mention those meetings again, to anyone,” said John, and he squeezed my arm tight. I tried to pull it away from him but he held his grip. “Bill, do you know what a Pinkerton man is?”
“What the hell?”
“Never mind. You just keep to yourself, and don’t talk about those meetings, hear?”
I had to look away from his eyes. “Sure, sure.”
“Okay, friend.”John let go of my arm. “Let’s have another beer.”
A week later John Petersen didn’t show up for work. And a week after that the cops found him floating downriver in the Potomac. I read about it in the Tribune. It was just a short notice, and it didn’t say nothing else. A cop in a suit came to the restaurant and asked us some questions. A couple of the waiters said that John probably had some bad hootch and fell into the drink. I didn’t know what to think. When it got around to the rest of the crew, everyone kinda got quiet, if you know what I mean. Even that bastard Wesley didn’t make no jokes. I guess we were all thinking about John in our own way. Me, I wanted to throw up. I’m telling you, thinking about John in that river, it made me sick.
John didn’t ever talk about no family and nobody knew nothing about a funeral. After a few days, it seemed like everybody in the restaurant forgot about him. But me, I couldn’t forget.
One night I walked into Chinatown. It wasn’t far from my new place. There was this kid from St. Mary’s, Billy Nicodemus, whose father worked at the city morgue. Nicodemus wasn’t no doctor or nothing, he washed off the slabs and cleaned the place, like that. He was known as a hard drinker, maybe because of what he saw every day, and maybe just because he liked the taste. I knew where he liked to drink.
I found him in a no-name restaurant on the Hip-Sing side of Chinatown. He was in a booth by himself, drinking something from a teacup. I crossed the room, walking through the cigarette smoke, passing the whores and the skinny Chink gangsters in their too-big suits and the cops who were taking money from the Chinks to look the other way. I stood over Nicodemus and told him who I was. I told him I knew his kid, told him his kid was good. Nicodemus motioned for me to have a seat.
A waiter brought me an empty cup. I poured myself some gin from the teapot on the table. We tapped cups and drank. Nicodemus had straight black hair wetted down and a big mole with hair coming out of it on one of his cheeks. He talked better than I did. We said some things that were about nothing and then I asked him some questions about John. The gin had loosened his tongue.
“Yeah, I remember him,” said Nicodemus, after thinking about it for a short while. He gave me the once-over and leaned forward. “This was your friend?”
“Yes.”
“They found a bullet in the back of his head. A twenty-two.”
I nodded and turned the teacup in small circles on the table. “The Tribune didn’t say nothing about that.”
“The papers don’t always say. The police cover it up while they look for who did it. But that boy didn’t drown. He was murdered first, then dropped in the drink.”
“You saw him?” I said.
Nicodemus shrugged. “Sure.”
“What’d he look like?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Yeah.”
“He was all gray and blown up, like a balloon. The gas does that to ’em, when they been in the water.”
“What about his eyes?”
“They were open. Pleading.”
“Huh?”
“His eyes. It was like they were sayin’ please.”
I needed a drink. I had some gin.
“You ever heard of a Pinkerton man?” I said.
“Sure,” said Nicodemus. “A detective.”
“Like the police?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“They go to work with other guys and pretend they’re one of them. They find out who’s stealing. Or they find out who’s trying to make trouble for the boss. Like the ones who want to make a strike.”
“You mean, like if a guy wants to get the workers together and make things better?”
“Yeah. Have meetings and all that. The guys who want to start a union. Pinkertons look for those guys.”
We drank the rest of the gin. We talked about his kid. We talked about Schmeling and Baer, and the wrestling match that was coming up between Londos and George Zaharias at Griffith Stadium. I got up from my seat, shook Nicodemus’s hand, and thanked him for the conversation.
“Efcharisto, patrioti.”
“Yasou, Vasili.”
I walked back to my place and had a beer I didn’t need. I was drunk and more confused than I had been before. I kept hearing John’s voice, the way he called me “friend.” I saw his eyes saying please. I kept thinking, I should have gone to his goddamn meeting, if that was gonna make him happy. I kept thinking I had let him down. While I was thinking, I sharpened the blade of my Italian switch knife on a stone.
The next night, last night, I was serving Wesley Schmidt his dinner after we closed. He was sitting by himself like he always did. I dropped the plate down in front of him.
“You got a minute to talk?” I said.
“Go ahead and talk,” he said, putting the spoon to his stew and stirring it around.
“I wanna be a Pinkerton man,” I said. Schmidt stopped stirring his stew and looked up my way. He smiled, showing me his white teeth. Still, his eyes were cold.
“That’s nice. But why are you telling me this?”
“I wanna be a Pinkerton, just like you.”
Schmidt pushed his stew plate away from him and looked around the dining room to make sure no one could hear us. He studied my face. I guess I was sweating. Hell, I know I was. I could feel it dripping on my back.
“You look upset,” said Schmidt, his voice real soft, like music. “You look like you could use a friend.”
“I just wanna talk.”
“Okay. You feel like having a beer, something like that?”
“Sure, I could use a beer.”
“I finish eating, I’ll go down and get my car. I’ll meet you in the alley out back. Don’t tell anyone, hear, because then they might want to come along. And we wouldn’t have the chance to talk.”