Walley blinked, stopped, drew his sleeve across his nostrils and tried a joke. “There’s other things to do.”
“The surroundings are a shade too stark,” Shaw said gently, winking at Flame. “Tell me one thing, Bum. How did you get let in for this lot? Working for a bunch of killers, I mean? Being Spice’s tame boot-licker?”
“You won’t get around me,” Walley said nervously. The Colt looked even more dangerous, as if he was about to let it off as a mere precautionary measure. “So don’t try.”
“I’m not,” Shaw told him. “I’ve already gathered you’re the lily-liverdest thing that ever trod the streets of Jersey City. I know we can’t expect you to show any decency, or any pride in being a U.S. citizen, or even any fellow-feeling for a couple of people of your own colour who’re due to be shipped out dead for China.” He was aware of the close, glitter-eyed scrutiny of the Chinese. “That’s not your style, Bum. All the same,” he added, “I’d like to know how much longer you think you can get away with being an accessory to large-scale murder.”
The Colt shook. Shaw watched the hammer and Walley’s knuckles. Walley cleared phlegm from his throat and said, “Long enough, mister. If I act right by Mr Spice and Mr Vilera they’ll see I’m okay.” Again he wiped his free hand across his nose. “Ain’t nothin’ I got to thank America for. I don’t owe nothin’ to my own race. Off and on, I done twenty-five years in Sing Sing. I don’t aim to go back up the river, not for you nor nobody else. I’m content where I am.”
“And God Bless America! So Spice and Vilera have something on you, Bum. I should have known.” He looked over Walley’s shoulder at the Chinese. “Do I take it you don’t ever come up here alone?”
Walley nodded. “That’s right.”
“A pity. I’ll just have to say my piece in front of your pal, then. Let me tell you this: I can’t commit the Department of Justice or the State Department or whoever, but I’m willing to bet that if you went out into the street and brought along the first cop you saw while Spice and Vilera are out on a manhunt, it’d go one hell of a long way to wiping out whatever it is you’ve done already for those two, and also whatever it is they’re blackmailing you over.”
Walley said, “Nothin’ doin’,” and laughed shakily.
“Well, just think it over, won’t you? I don’t suppose it’s something you can decide on the spur of the moment,” Shaw said with heavy sarcasm.
Walley didn’t commit himself to further speech; the Colt gave a final waver and withdrew. The door slammed shut and back went the bolts and the lock.
Shaw sighed and pulled the tin of food towards him. He prodded at the bread with a finger. “It was worth a shot,” he said. “Not that I really expected startling results, I admit. The Blacks have that bastard licked — he daren’t lift his head for fear they’ll bash him in the teeth.”
Flame said, with an obvious effort to keep talking calmly, “You any private ideas what’s behind all this?”
He shrugged. “No real ideas yet… but I’m damned if I like the possible implications. There’s something explosive in the air these days. I’d like to find out just what it is, and why.”
“For the moment, you can’t do much about that.”
“Too true! But haven’t you noticed what I mean, Flame?”
She said slowly, “A feeling in the air? Why, yes, I guess I have. But I can’t put a name to it… or be explicit in any way.” She hesitated, then went on, “Look — I’ve talked to you about the jigs, about not sleeping with them and that. I’d just like you to know that’s not the whole story of how I feel about them — or let’s say, felt till now. Normally, they’re okay far as I’m concerned. In my job, I have to keep my distance, that’s all I really meant.”
He nodded. “I understand that, Flame. They’re not all like Spice and Josephson, though to hear some Whites talk you’d think they were.”
That sent her to the defence of her country. “Don’t forget, there’s a hell of a lot of Negroes around in America. It’s not a problem you can laugh off. The Blacks as much as the Whites have to reshape their thinking if we’re all to live like one great, big, happy family.”
Shaw nodded again. “There’s the two sides and both are dead right — and at the same time they’re both dead wrong, if you follow. Only now, you see, there’s a third side.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“China,” he said harshly. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t now know, when I say China’s behind Spice and Vilera and God alone knows how many more like them. The Chinese Communists are up to something and Peking’s using men like Spice and the rest as pawns.” He investigated the food tin again and took up one of the mugs. He smelt the coffee, tasted a little on his tongue. “Muck but safe,” was his verdict. “Drink up, Flame. We have to keep up our strength as much as we can.”
Three days later, by which time the panther’s claw-marks on Shaw’s back had more or less healed, as had Flame’s knife cut, the girl said suddenly, “God, I can’t stand this any more. I’ll go raving mad.”
“Easy,” Shaw murmured, holding her body close to his own. “You’re not going to give up, Flame. I’ve a feeling we’re going to come through this.” Even to himself the words were a mockery. They were both close to the last act now — they must be. Spice had said three or four days… Shaw’s eyes were red-rimmed and stinging, his skin pale now beneath the growth of brown stubble. He was caged, impotent, hungry — and almost without hope. Even Walley hadn’t spoken since that first breakfast; they hadn’t been able to raise a flicker from him. He was too scared now, too demoralized and abject to risk angering his Chinese escort. Oddly enough he had remained sober, though there was still an ingrained smell of rye on his breath every time he climbed that concrete stairway. Shaw had been hoping for a usefully drunken Bum to enter their prison, a Bum so tight that the Colt could be grabbed from him and then used on the Chinese before Bum’s eyes could focus, but he might have known better. Spice was no fool. Bum was clearly continuously supervised, even as to the bottle, even down in the office or wherever it was he existed when he wasn’t carrying the mess tin. Bum had a brain-in-charge. Bum was only the tea-boy.
On the fourth morning Bum blossomed into a new job. He brought the day’s papers, White and Black. New York Times, Herald Tribune, Chicago Daily News, Amsterdam News, some Southern papers. They all had it: general and granddaughter disappear, they said, without trace, segregationist ostermans last seen riding horseback, they Said. One paper was more concise: negro-haters’ exit. Those headings summarized adequately enough all that was known as fact: from there, the fiction-writers took over. On other pages the leader-writers mostly said it wasn’t good enough. Too many such disappearances, and all of them more or less noted persons who had got up against the Blacks. What were the state troopers doing, where was the F.B.I.? Murder — if the vanished persons had been murdered — was a State and not a Federal crime, certainly, but there were obvious charges — such as ‘violation of constitutional rights’—that the F.B.I. could bring once they got a lead. Why didn’t the President announce a State of Emergency, asked the Southern White press — call out the National Guard, put the army on an alert? You couldn’t expect the Whites to go on taking it much longer. And so on. With all of which, the Negro newspapers of moderate views wholeheartedly concurred. Their editors deplored the possible actions of their extremist brothers.