Jones, a living embodiment of at least one American dream, saved his money and when he thought he had enough he deserted the glitter of Miami Beach for the squalor of Miami’s black ghetto. He shot his way into the rackets against competition as bitter and ruthless as could be found anywhere. He also invented his nickname, insisted that it be used, and if it wasn’t when his picture appeared in the Miami papers, which it did often enough, he’d call up the city desk and raise hell. I remember somebody once telling me that the Jamaican had even considered changing his name legally to Nick the Nigger Jones but, for one reason or other, never got around to it.
Jones waved at us lazily from the far end of Morze’s thirty-five-foot living room which could have been copied from a 1954 edition of House Beautiful. It was that kind of furniture and that kind of taste. He was sprawled on a green divan, dressed in a cream polo shirt, fawn slacks and brown loafers. He wore no socks.
“Help yourself to some coffee, Chief,” Jones said, not rising. “You look as if you could use it. You too, Dye.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I will.” I poured two cups from an electric percolator and handed one to Necessary who sipped it noisily. Nobody asked us to sit down so we stood in front of the picture window.
“How was Luccarella?” Necessary asked Jones.
“Luccarella,” Jones said softly and then said it again. “Pretty name, don’t you think?” He turned to Morze who sat slumped in a green easy chair that faced the large window. “Do we know a chap called Luccarella, Bill?”
Morze grinned and this time looked happy about it. “I b’lieves he was with the gentlemens who came callin earlier this mawnin,” he said, still talking mushmouth.
“Ah,” Jones said. “That Luccarella.” He was silent for a moment and then gazed directly at Necessary. “He’s quite insane, you know.”
“So I hear,” Necessary said and sipped some more coffee.
“He kept raving about some plane or other that was scheduled to leave at six-forty-five this morning or some such ghastly hour. He even seemed to think that I should be on it.”
“He thought a lot of people should be on it,” Necessary said. “Some of them agreed with him.”
“Really?” Jones said. “Who?”
“Puranelli’s on it,” Necessary said. “He’s a little busted up, but he’s on it. So are the Onealo brothers. Tex Turango caught it, too.”
Jones nodded thoughtfully. “I think,” he said after a moment, “that it may be far more interesting to learn who’s not on it.”
“Schoemeister,” Necessary said. “He’s not on it.”
Jones once again nodded his tanned face with its cap of tight golden curls. His eyes, I noticed, were dark brown with long thick lashes. He had a thin, straight nose and a broad mouth that smiled easily above a neat chin. Nick the Nigger was almost pretty.
As he picked up his cup and headed toward the percolator, I turned toward the window and saw them. There were two of them, two Ford Galaxie sedans, and they came much too fast down Marshall Street. I shoved Necessary hard and he went reeling away and crashed into a small table some fifteen feet from the window. Jones turned quickly, holding his cup in his left hand and the percolator in his right. I dived at him and the hot coffee spilled over my neck as we tumbled and twisted down behind the far end of the green divan. I could see Morze start to rise from the green easy chair that matched the divan. He was halfway out of it before the picture window shattered and one of the bullets slammed him back in the chair. It seemed to press him deep into its cushions. There was another burst from the submachine gun, or they could have had two of them, but the second burst hit nothing other than three framed prints of some Degas dancers who were dressed in pink and white.
I could hear one of the cars roaring off and I wondered how deep its rear wheels churned into Morze’s finickly kept lawn. I stared at Morze who leaned forward now, his mouth open as he tried to gasp big gulps of air. My peripheral vision saw the first one as it arched through the broken picture window. I tightened up quickly into a ball as the grenade’s explosion blasted through the living room. I didn’t see the second one; I had my eyes squeezed shut, but it sounded louder than the first and underneath me Jones screamed and jerked violently.
The grind and roar of the second car as it dug its wheels into Morze’s lawn was all I could hear for several moments after the second blast and I couldn’t hear that too well because I seemed to be partially deaf. Then there was nothing, only that godawful silence that I’d heard once, a long time before, if you can hear a silence, on Shanghai’s Nanking Road.
I opened my eyes and rose carefully. The room was a mess and William Morze huddled in the remains of the green chair, whimpering, a blinded mass of black flesh that was covered with strips of torn yellow silk and patches of dark red blood. Nick Jones writhed on the floor and screamed once more. I bent down and saw that the left leg of his fawn slacks was soaked with blood just below the knee. I ripped the slacks open and looked at his calf. It was bleeding all right, but it wasn’t serious. I tapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll live,” I said.
“It feels like the goddamned thing is gone,” he said and managed to sit up. I turned and looked at the opposite end of the room. Necessary was already on the phone, talking into it from around one of his Camels. He hung up and moved toward us.
Suddenly the room seemed full of tall, broad-shouldered blacks who poured into the living room from the rear of the house. Some of them held revolvers. They advanced on me threateningly until Jones waved them away. He sat on the torn and shredded divan and stared at his bleeding leg. Then he looked up at the blacks and said, “One of you motherfuckers go see if the bathroom’s got anything to bandage this with.” A chunky tan man hurried away and then they all began talking at once.
Necessary was bending over Morze. When he got up, he shook his head. “Dead?” Jones asked.
“He’s alive, but I think he’s blind,” Necessary said. “If the ambulance ever gets here, they might keep him alive. Maybe. He’s a mess.” He turned to me. “You all right?”
“I’m okay.”
Morze was whimpering again in the remains of the green chair. Jones stared at him. “He was a very good old man,” he said softly. The six or seven Negroes were quiet now, looking at Morze with a kind of horrified fascination. The chunky tan man returned with a roll of gauze and knelt down by Jones and started to bandage his bleeding calf. He wasn’t very good at first aid.
Necessary drew close to me. “You saw them,” he said.
“Just two cars. Two Fords. That’s all I saw.”
“You couldn’t tell who it was.” Necessary wasn’t asking questions; he was merely stating the facts as he understood them.
“They were too far away,” I said.
Necessary nodded and then looked at me with his brown and blue eyes. “Thanks for—” He never did finish thanking me for whatever favor he thought I’d done him, probably the hard shove that had sent him reeling down the living room, because the siren screamed outside. We looked through the shattered window and it was Sergeant Krone and the Imperial. Krone was out of the car now and running toward the house, his .38 revolver drawn. He kept swinging the revolver from left to right and back again and the crowd of blacks opened and then closed behind him. There must have been five hundred of them and they stared at Krone and at the house and at its shattered window.
“Where the Christ did they come from?” Necessary asked.
One of the blacks opened the door for Krone and he bounded through, waving his .38 around. “Will you put that goddamned thing away,” Necessary snapped. Krone gazed around wildly before he put the revolver back in its holster.