“I nearly had him! Then he got away from me again! Quick, give me one of your cigarettes!”
I didn’t get it; I was slow on the pickup. Like a dope, I thought for a minute she wanted it for herself. She grabbed it from me, jerked it into her mouth, bent over the candle for a moment, and then beat it back there again, leaving a little bluish haze in the air where she’d been standing.
I got what she’d really wanted it for only after she was already gone again. She never smoked those things herself — she’d told me so — she was a cigar smoker. But I guess there’s too big a coal on a cigar.
“I’m going nuts if I get much more of those sound effects,” I told myself, and walked around a lot in tight corkscrew circles that kept getting smaller each time around, until they ended in standing still in one place.
The yelp was loud and clear when it came, and it blew all the fog away. I tried not to picture it, but I couldn’t help wondering how deep she’d had to go, how long she’d had to — hold it steady.
That did it; that ended it. After that there were just the two voices, murmuring low.
That part of it took a long time too. I guess she had to gain his confidence. But I guess the money helped some too. It should have. It’s the greatest little thing there is for winning confidence.
Then finally she came back to me again, came tottering back. She looked all in. You’d almost think that some of the aftereffects had transferred themselves to her, the livid sick color she’d turned. She had the look on her face of someone who has just been granted a quick glimpse down into the bottommost depths of hell from the top of the stairs. And didn’t turn away quickly enough.
Her teeth were chattering as she closed the door behind her. “I’d rather be dead,” she said. She shuddered and she pulled her shawl around her tight, and the night was hot in Havana. “Boy, could I use a shot of aguardiente — after that!” She flung herself down into a chair and held her hair.
“You should have let me go in and tackle it.”
She fanned her hand at me without looking around. “You wouldn’t have known which end his head was at. And he probably would have pulled a knife on you and run amuck as soon as he got a look at your face. They’re apt to be more afraid of a Yank than they are of a Cuban.”
I didn’t ask her anything; I let her sit for a while and get over it. I kept watching her and thinking, You find gold in the unlikeliest places. Dunghills and ash heaps. She’d done it for me. Gone in there like that for me. Someone she didn’t even know back an hour or two. Why? What did she get out of it? What was the percentage? Yes, you find gold kicking around in the funniest places.
She lifted her chin from the back of the chair. “It’s Tio Chin, all right,” she said quietly. “I can tell by the way he described the layout. He’s never seen him himself, this one, but all you have to do is put two and two together. The store is just a front. The place they go for it is a dive called ‘Mama Inez.’ That’s around on the next alley, and it backs up against the store. I know that place; I’ve passed it often myself. Both under the same roof, get it? There isn’t any Mama Inez; that’s just the trade name. It’s a combination eating place and rumshop; on a close night you can smell it all the way down at the corner.”
“Do you think I have any chance of finding out anything if I go in there?”
“No,” she said flatly.
“Then what’s the—?”
“But you’re going over with him. Going through the mill with him. That makes a difference.”
“That sounds appetizing. You mean actually buy a pipe and—?”
“Listen, they’re not fools in that racket. You think they’re wide open to the street, so all you gotta do is hand them a card that says ‘Joe sent me?’ And then you get a bird’s-eye view of the works?”
“All right, I go in and get introduced. They grab me.”
“That’s what we want, isn’t it?”
“It’s all right about getting them to grab me. But that’s only half of it. How are we going to get the cops in on it? Once I’m grabbed I’m no longer a free agent.”
“What do you suppose I’ll be doing — sitting up here manicuring my nails? I’ll follow the two of you over to this den, guapo. At a distance, so he won’t notice me. Then after you go in I’ll hang around out there in the alley. A girl holding up a doorway is no novelty in this neighborhood.”
“How will you know? I won’t be able to get word to you. If I signal you before they grab me that’ll be too soon. If I wait until after they grab me I won’t be able to signal you at all.”
“We’ll have to work out some sort of a timetable then. Suppose I wait an hour from the time you go in?”
“That ought to be long enough. If they’re going to grab me at all they’ll have me grabbed by that time. One more thing. How do you know they’ll listen to you?”
“The cops? They won’t. So I’m not going to waste my time trying to tell them that you’re innocent, or that you’ve been grabbed in there, or anything else. All I’ll tell them is that I know where they can find you, that I saw you go in there. They’re looking for you already. That’ll send them in prisa without asking any more questions than that. I’m a stool pigeon, see? I’m trying to pick up a little loose change for myself by handing them this information. Then once they get in, let them find out the rest for themselves.
“It’s tricky timing. How’ll I know how long an hour is? I don’t pack a watch.”
“How’ll I know? I don’t either. You can tell how long it is by the way it feels. Didn’t you ever try that? It’s easy. You can feel time just as easy as you can tell it from a clock.”
I couldn’t help laughing at something that occurred to me just then. “Suppose an hour feels a lot longer to you than it does to me and we miss connections?”
“Ah, cut it out!” she said gruffly. “This is no time to be funny. You may end up laughing on the other side of your face.”
There was a soft shuffling sound outside the door.
“Here comes your convoy. He’s going to steer you in there and show you the ropes. Otherwise you’d probably never get past the street entrance. You’re white, you know, and they don’t trust you guys.”
I got a little stage fright down under the belt “Say, I’m not going to have to — try any myself, am I?”
“You better not, guapo, if you want to keep our timetable straight. That stuff shoots your sense of time to pieces. It makes a minute seem like an hour, or it can make an hour go by like a minute. I suppose you can fake it in some way if you have to; stick cotton in your nose, or something.”
She looked at me half humorously, half sympathetically. “Are you scared?”
“Sure I’m scared,” I said irritably. “What do you think I am, anyway — a tin soldier? But I’m going through with it.”
“I’m glad you admitted it,” she said. “Because if you said you weren’t I would have only called you a liar — in my heart. And I don’t like to have to do that with my friends. I’m a crook, but I’m an honest crook. I’m scared too — for you. But I’m going through with my part of it.” She hitched up her shoulders. “Always remember this. A hundred years from now it’ll be all the same to the two of us.” “A hundred minutes from now it’ll be all the same to the two of us.”
“You better go out there now — before he goes back under standing up and I have to bring him to all over again. I’ll step out and make the contact for you.”
The last thing she said was, “Don’t look around. I’ll be behind you on the street.”