“He was medium heighth—” Frank Smith pronounced height with a “th” at the end and I couldn’t see how he would profit from it if I were to correct him. “Around five foot nine or ten. Weighed maybe hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty. Black hair. He had on a suit, I remember. A tan suit.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“I don’t know,” Frank Smith said. “Shit, I don’t remember the color of his eyes.”
“You’d be in trouble if you did,” Necessary said. “What’d he call himself?”
“He didn’t.”
“No name at all?”
Frank Smith shook his head.
“You ever see him before?”
“No.”
“Okay. What’d he say? Everything you can remember.”
“Well, he says there’s this guy over in eight-nineteen in the Sycamore and this guy owed him some gambling money and won’t pay. So he says he’ll give us fifty apiece to mess the guy up a little. Then he gives us the key to the room and an envelope to leave with the guy when we get done.”
“What else, Frank?”
“Well, he says the guy’s out of the hotel right now and we can wait for him in his room. Then he gives us the fifty each and we come on over and start waiting.”
“Why you?”
“Huh?”
The “huh” won him another slap. “Why’d he pick you two, Frank?” Necessary said, and his voice was curiously gentle.
Frank Smith didn’t seem to find much comfort in the tone. “I don’t know — and don’t hit me! He seemed to know us. He walked right up to us and called us by name.”
“How many times’ve you been booked, Frank?”
“Three. Maybe four.”
“Car theft?”
“Once.”
“Assault?”
“Maybe twice.”
“D and D?”
“Once.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“What else, Frank?”
“Nothing. I swear.”
“How much time in the joint?”
“Six months.” Frank Smith muttered it.
“Car theft?”
“Yeah.”
“State?”
“At Mandersfield.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“What’s your buddy’s name?”
“Joe Carson.”
“Where’d you meet him, at Mandersfield?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What was he in for?”
“Breaking and entry. He done a year.”
“How long’ve you been out?”
“Couple of months.”
Joe Carson groaned and I turned around. Necessary didn’t bother. Carson moved a little, but it was really only a twitch.
“Either of you on parole?” Necessary said.
“No. We done it all.”
“You’re lucky.”
Joe Carson groaned again and this time Necessary turned to look at him. Then he looked at his watch and nodded in a satisfied way. “Just about right,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. He turned back to Frank Smith. “You got the envelope?”
“Joe’s got it,” Frank Smith said.
“Well, then, I want you to go over to Joe and get the envelope and hand it to Mr. Dye who you were supposed to give it to in the first place. I also want you to give me the fifty bucks that ‘just a guy’ gave you and I also want the fifty he gave Joe over there. You got that?”
Frank Smith nodded and moved over to Carson. He took an envelope from Carson’s hip pocket, found the fifty dollars, and returned to where Necessary stood. “You want the money?” he said to Necessary.
“That’s right.”
“Here’s Joe’s fifty.” He handed it over. Then he dug into his own pocket and came up with another wad of bills. “Here’s mine.” Necessary stuffed them into his own pocket.
“He gets the envelope?” Frank Smith said. He seemed determined to do everything correctly.
“That’s right,” Necessary said.
“Here,” Frank Smith said and handed me the envelope.
“Now drag him out of here before he wakes up and vomits all over the place,” Necessary said.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all, Frank.”
“Yessir.”
Frank Smith bent over Carson, grasped him under the armpits, and started dragging him toward the door. Carson groaned again. “Can you get the door, mister?” Frank Smith said to me, I held it open while he dragged Carson into the corridor. “What do I do with him now?” he said.
“That’s your problem,” I said and closed the door.
“How was your meeting?” Necessary said.
I nodded my head as I opened the envelope. “They propositioned me.”
“What’s it say?”
I handed the single sheet to him. It was printed in penciled block letters. Necessary read it aloud, giving each word the same emphasis as those who aren’t accustomed to reading aloud usually do. “Just a sample,” he read. “Next time is for keeps.” He shook his head. “Amateurs,” he said.
“Maybe.”
“Pros don’t give away second chances.”
“I know.”
“They may try again and then it won’t be a couple of punks.”
“Probably not.”
“It bother you?”
“Sure it bothers me,” I said.
“That’s good. I’d be a little worried if it didn’t.” He sighed deeply. “I guess I’d better stick a little closer.”
“You did fine a while ago. Thanks.”
“Orcutt sent me down.”
“He want something?”
Necessary shook his head. “He just got a hunch. He gets them sometimes. So he got a hunch that I should come down to your room. He was right.” He paused a moment. “As usual.”
“I’ll thank him too.”
“We’d better go see him.”
“Has he got a drink up there?”
“Sure.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Necessary started toward the door but paused. “You want I should split the hundred with you?”
“You keep it.”
“Half’s yours if you want it.”
“You earned it,” I said.
He started moving toward the door again and again stopped. “What’d they really want with you at that meeting?”
“They wanted to know if I was banging Carol Thackerty yet.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“The truth. I said not yet.”
Chapter 18
Major Albert Schiller and I got hit within thirty seconds of each other on April 17, 1953, about halfway up — or down — the Korean hill called Pork Chop which they made a motion picture about some years later. I think it starred Gregory Peck. The major and I could have used him. I was then nineteen years old and a master sergeant, the youngest in the entire United States Army, or so I’d been told. The major was thirty-six which made him, he falsely claimed, the oldest major in the army, and he didn’t make lieutenant colonel until shortly before he retired in 1961.
We had stumbled halfway to the top of Pork Chop Hill to set up our equipment at an outpost supposedly held by E Company of the 31st Infantry. The equipment consisted of a battery of loudspeakers similar to those used for public address systems in ball parks, college gymnasiums, and football stadiums. I was to use the speakers to address the CCF from the E-Company outpost. I was to insult the CCF, revile it, even taunt it.
“Hit ‘em right in the guts, son,” the general had said to me. “Make ‘em wonder who’s screwing their wives. Make ‘em itchy to get home. You know, undermine their morale.”
The CCF, whose morale I was supposed to undermine, was of course the Communist Chinese Forces who were more or less ignoring the truce negotiations that were then underway at Panmunjom.
Major Schiller had dreamed up the project all by himself and then went scouting for a Chinese-speaking American. He found me, fresh from the States, in an infantry repple depple and promptly had me transferred to what he fondly called his “little psy-war shop.” He somehow had convinced a National Guard general of the merit of his scheme and the general personally had bucked most of Schiller’s proposed table of organization through channels. The approval enabled the major to zoom me from private to master sergeant in two weeks. I had a corporal who was a clerk-typist under my command and together we composed all that there was of Major Schiller’s little psy-war shop.