“So I’m like a roadblock you need to run, that about right?”
“No, sir. Not something to get around, that isn’t what I was saying. I mean, I got to show you something, same way any man would have to show a girl’s father something.”
“Not many young men think like that, not today.”
“Not many young black men think at all. All they want to do is get themselves some fine vines, a sweet ride, and tear it up on Saturday night.”
“And that’s not you, what you’re saying?”
“That’s not any kind of me, Mr. Moses. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t eat swine. I don’t want to make babies for the Welfare to feed. I save my money. And I got plans.”
“Everybody around here knows you’ve got a brain, Rufus,” the elderly man said, calmly. “But there’s a world of difference between smart and slick.”
“Fair enough. Just ask me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. Then you can make up your own mind.”
“Let me give you an example,” the old man said, unruffled. “You’ve been knowing me for years, from your first day on the job. Before today, you speak to me, you call me ‘Moses,’ right? Or ‘man’ or some other kind of jive talk. Today, what comes out your mouth? It’s all ‘sir’ and ‘Mr. Moses.’ Like, all of a sudden, lightning struck you and you got all this respect. Now,” he said, drawing on his pipe unsuccessfully, then pausing to relight it, “that’s either get-over game, or you got another reason.”
“Rosa Mae-”
“-been calling me ‘Daddy Moses’ for a long time, Rufus. She didn’t start today.”
“I know that. But it wasn’t until I… knew I had feelings for her that it… meant anything to me. I’m not going to lie.”
“Because you got no other reason to show me respect.”
“You’re just like she is,” Rufus said. “Making things hard. What do you want me to say?”
“The truth. Like you promised.”
“All right,” Rufus said, moving closer to the old man. “Here’s some truth: I was raised to respect my elders, but that was all about manners-what you say, not what you feel. Why should I respect someone just because they’re older than me? That never made any sense.”
“Don’t make no sense to me, neither,” Moses said, surprising the younger man. “You know what experience is?”
“Of course I know what it is.”
“Yeah? So, you got something wrong with your car, you want to take it to an experienced mechanic?”
“Sure…” Rufus agreed, warily.
“Let’s say the man been working on cars for thirty years. You call a man like that ‘experienced,’ right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, now let’s say he been working on cars for thirty years but he never was no good at it. In fact, he so lousy a mechanic that he had himself a hundred different jobs. Kept getting fired, one place after the other, because he couldn’t do a job without messing it up. He got a lot of experience, but no knowledge. Lots of old people like that. If they ain’t learned nothing, just being old don’t make them people you should be listening to.”
Rufus stared at the old man for a long time. Moses looked back, unperturbed, at peace within himself.
“Can I sit down? On that crate, there?” Rufus asked. “I got some things I need to tell you.”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:20
“It’s going to be Nixon for the Republicans,” Beaumont said.
“Sure, and who else? But he’s no war hero, like Ike was. And our guy, well, he is.”
“You’re positive that’s such a good thing?” Beaumont challenged his visitor. “If the voters think your guy’s going to get us into another mess like Korea, he’s dead in the water.”
“No, no, no,” Shalare answered, quickly. “That’s all been talked over. We know how to wrap a package, Roy. Our man’s going to be a tiger on national defense, sure, but that’ll be self-defense, not sticking our nose into another meat-grinder like Korea.”
“Nixon’s no Eisenhower in more ways than one,” Beaumont said, warningly. “And one of those is, he’s a whole lot smarter.”
“An election’s not an IQ test. If it was, Stevenson would have won the last couple of times, wouldn’t he?”
“There’s all kinds of smart,” Beaumont said. “I never met the man, but, with television, you can get a read on someone even at a distance. I’ll tell you this: you’re not going to find a craftier man in all of politics than Richard Nixon.”
“He’s a ferret-faced schemer, no doubt,” Shalare said. “And that’s a plus for him. The minus is, he looks like what he is. And, like you said, television. That’s going to play a big role in what’s to come.”
Beaumont nodded his concurrence.
“The timing is right,” Shalare continued. “The Taft machine pretty much died off when Ike got the nomination away from them. A lot of them crossed over after that. Look at Warren. They took care of him, and, soon as he got on the Supreme Court, he ambushed the lot of them.”
“That was Eisenhower’s mistake. Nixon wouldn’t make the same one.”
“If we all pull together, Nixon won’t get the chance.”
“Tell me again why I should be part of that,” Beaumont said, lighting another cigarette.
“Didn’t I already?”
“Dioguardi? He’s not such a problem, for what you’re asking.”
“It’s not the person, it’s the… situation. Look at this Castro, over in Cuba. The great revolutionary he is, freeing his people from the yoke of oppression. Mark what I say: he’ll be the same as the man he removed. He’ll use different words, dress different, maybe. But he didn’t take over that country to free it, Roy. He took it over to rule it.”
“So, even if Dioguardi… disappeared, there’d be another to take his place?”
“You know that’s true as well as I do,” Shalare said. “It’s not Dioguardi himself who has to disappear; it’s the reason he was sent that has to go.”
“Here we’re talking about elections, and you want to make me a promise,” Beaumont said, smiling to take some of the sting out of his words.
“That’s right, I do,” Shalare said, not rising to the bait. “For starters, there won’t be any more squabbling about jukebox rents. Nobody else trying to handle the pinball machines or the punch cards, either.”
“Pennies.”
“Pennies add up to dollars, don’t they? And nobody likes to pay the same landlord twice. Dioguardi’s people are going to stop selling protection insurance, too. For starters,” Shalare reminded Beaumont.
“Because…?”
“Because he’s going to be told to stop. And he will. Everything. This whole town will go back to its rightful owner. You, Roy.”
“He never took it. And he never could.”
“He never did. But he was coming, and you know it. Now he stops.”
“One door opens and another one-”
“He stops everything, Roy. The only thing Salvatore Dioguardi’s going to do in Locke City from now on is pay his taxes.”
“How’s he going to keep his men, with no income?”
“Then I guess he’ll lose some of them.”
“The way he already has?”
“I told you, we had nothing to do with that,” Shalare said. “Anyways, losing a few men wouldn’t keep him off you-that’s just the cost of doing business.”
“I don’t know how that whole Mafia thing works. Is Dioguardi some kind of big shot, or just their stalking horse?”
“I’m not sure. What difference does it make?”
“If he’s a stalking horse, one they put in here to see if they could find a soft spot, they’ll learn soon enough that they made a mistake. But if he’s a big shot, and this was his own idea, that’s different.”
“Because, if he’s a big shot, he might be too stubborn to pull out? Or even big enough to call in more troops?”