“The men he recently… lost. That was your work?” Beaumont said.
Oh, this man is a master of his trade, Shalare thought to himself. “It was not,” he replied, sincerely. “We’ve no idea what that was about, but it has nothing to do with this conversation. When I say we reached past Dioguardi, I mean all the way to the people who sent him to Locke City in the first place.”
“Reached past him for what?”
“For a lesson in reality,” Shalare said. “As of the minute I walk out your door, Dioguardi’s intrusions into your affairs are going to stop. Not slack off, not change target-stop. As if they hit a brick wall.”
“When I was a kid, there was a guy, for a dollar, he’d run right into a brick wall,” Beaumont said. “Butt it with his head like a ram.”
“Probably ended up with mush for a brain,” Shalare said.
“Yeah,” Beaumont said. “That’s exactly what happened to him. He started out stupid, and he got stupider. Only thing is, he kept right on doing it… butting that wall.”
“I must be missing your meaning, Roy.”
“This guy, the one who rammed the wall? He kept right on doing it, usually when he was drunk. Until, one day, he must have hit the wall wrong. Dropped dead, right there on the spot.”
“Ah.”
“See, before this guy got all mushy in the head, he thought he could keep hitting that wall forever, and nothing would happen to him,” Beaumont said, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Then, when his brain turned soft, he wasn’t smart enough to stop. Oh, you could get him to stop temporarily. But, soon as he got drunk, he’d go right back to it.”
“Dioguardi’s bosses, they want this as bad as mine do,” Shalare said, underscoring his understanding.
“So you came here to tell me Dioguardi’s going to back off until the election…?”
“He’s not going to be a problem for you, Roy,” Shalare said. “Not now, not ever. And we’ll give you any assurances you want on that score. Any at all.”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 17:29
Tussy awoke to find Dett still in the armchair, watching her. He looks like he hasn’t moved a muscle, she thought, finding the feeling oddly comforting. “That was just what I needed,” she said, throwing off the pink blanket, so that it landed across Fireball. The big cat struggled out from underneath, gave Dett an annoyed look, as if the entire episode had been his fault, and marched off.
“You feel better?” Dett said.
“I feel great,” Tussy said, stretching her arms over her head. “Sometimes, when I’m feeling just… beat, I take one of my little naps, and it always works.”
“Your cat didn’t seem too thrilled.”
“Oh, Fireball thinks this is his couch. But I never take naps in the bed. That’s too much like sleeping. When I use the couch, I never seem to sleep long, even without an alarm clock.”
Dett got to his feet.
“Are you sure you want to drive all the way back to the hotel just to change clothes?” Tussy asked. “It’s… why, it’s after five. I never realized…”
“I didn’t, either. The time, I mean. I wish I could stay here…” Dett’s voice fell into a pit of such despair that Tussy felt the vibration as it landed.
“Well, you certainly don’t have to get all dressed up just to go to a drive-in movie, Walker. I’m not going to change. I mean, I am going to take a shower, but I’m not going to get into a dress or anything.”
“I want to do the same thing.”
“The same… Oh, take a shower? Well, you could do that here, couldn’t you?”
“I… I never thought of that. But I… I mean, I… I don’t have fresh clothes to change into, not with me.”
“Well… all right, then,” Tussy said. She stood on her toes, kissed Dett lightly just to the side of his lips. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 17:31
“I wonder,” Beaumont said. “You’re not just doing a job, are you, Mickey?”
“What do you mean?”
“When people spend money, it’s either a purchase or an investment.”
“Aye. And, if you’re asking me, is Mickey Shalare some sort of mercenary, the answer is no. I’ve got-all my people have got-a huge stake in this.”
“Yes?” Beaumont said, inviting an explanation.
Shalare took a slow, deliberate sip of his drink. “Yes,” he said, evenly, rejecting the offer.
“Have you ever been beat down?” Beaumont asked, suddenly. “Getting pounded on so bad, by so many people, that you can’t hope to win?”
“Aye,” the Irishman said, gravely.
“So, when I tell you that, sometimes, the best you can hope for is just to get one in, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“And it doesn’t matter if you walk away afterward,” Beaumont said. “Look at me, Mickey; how long do you think it’s been since I could walk at all? It doesn’t matter if you crawl, just so long as you survive. Stay alive, so, someday, you can return the favor.”
“ ‘Getting your own back,’ we call it,” Shalare said, holding his glass in a silent toast to a shared value.
“And we call it ‘payback,’ ” Beaumont said, raising his own glass. “But it doesn’t matter what something’s called, only what it is. Have you ever just… nourished yourself with that thought, with only that thought? ‘Getting your own back’?”
“Sometimes,” Shalare said quietly, “it was more than food and drink to me. Without it, I would have starved.”
“I must have some Irish blood in me, then,” Beaumont said, solemnly.
1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:12
Rufus didn’t change out of his bellhop’s uniform when his shift was over. Though acknowledging the truth of what Moses had told him-he had, in fact, never seen a white man in the basement of the hotel-he reasoned that even a chance encounter with any of the white staff would go unnoticed if he was in uniform. Makes us look even more alike to you, he thought, as he made his way down the back stairs.
Walking past the kitchen, Rufus heard the the intimate caress of Charles Brown’s sultry voice drifting out of the radio, crooning his signature “Black Night.” “Oh, Charles!” a kitchen worker implored him, to the rich laughter of her girlfriends.
Moses was in his chair, his pipe already working.
“Leave it open,” he said, as Rufus entered. “People see a closed door, they got to find out what’s on the other side of it. We keep our voices down, with these walls, might as well be in a different town, all anyone could hear. Besides, this way, we see them coming.”
Nodding his head at the wisdom, Rufus glanced around the room, not saying a word.
“Ain’t got no other chair,” Moses said. “But you could probably get something to sit on out of the-”
“I can stand, say what I got to say.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“It’s about Rosa Mae.”
“What about her?”
“I got feelings for her. Not what you think,” Rufus said, holding up his hand as if to ward off those same thoughts. “I got… I’m deep in love with her, and I told her so.”
“So what you need to talk to me about?” Moses said, puffing slowly on his pipe.
“Rosa Mae’s got no father. Not even one of those Christmas daddies, come around once a year, bring some presents, get a fuss made over them, and then go back to their trifling little hustles. So, when I told her if she had a real father I would go and talk to him first, she said I should talk to you.”
Moses drew on his pipe again, his body language that of a man waiting for something. A patient man.
“I know she wasn’t just… messing me around,” Rufus said. “Everybody here knows you just like her father. Look out for her and all, I mean. And she listens to you like a father. Respects you like one, too. So…”