Carlisle Minty go around beating people up, threatening the blacks to drop this walkout idea? Next, you’re going to tell me he shot up that house on Market Street too?”
“Kid says this is the guy who jumped him. That’s what I know.”
Cynthia tosses the newspaper clipping onto the bar top as if she’s casting aside this whole ridiculous idea. “I
“Well, maybe that’s his public face. Maybe in private he’d tell you something different,” Jay says, sipping his beer for the first time. The taste is bittersweet, the texture thick and warm. It makes him think of a kiss. It makes him hot about the neck and chest. “Isn’t that how you politicians do things?”
Cynthia cocks her head to one side, studying his face, a thought just now occurring to her. “You don’t particularly like me very much, do you, Jay?”
“I don’t trust you. There’s a difference.”
Cynthia nods, as if she can live with this, as if untrustwor thiness were only a matter of perspective, and Jay is certainly entitled to his. But Jay has known her too long not to catch the subtle shift in her expression, like clouds passing over. There is something newly grim and regretful in her eyes. She’s quiet a minute, pensive, rubbing out the orange, smoking tip of her cig arette, twirling the butt around in heavy circles inside the black plastic ashtray. “If you don’t trust me, Jay,” she asks softly, “what are you doing here?”
Jay looks at the mayor, searching for traces of the girl he used to know, beneath the frosted tips and split ends, beneath the heavy makeup, which has, at this hour, begun to settle into the deep creases around her mouth. He can tell how hard she’s try ing to manage her image, and it makes him kind of sad.
“Hoping I’m wrong,” he says.
He taps Carlisle Minty’s face in the newspaper. “This is your chance to make it right,” he says. “From this point on, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You should tell those boys to go back to work.”
“Why don’t you tell them?” He stands, heading for the front door.
“They’ll listen to you, Jay.”
“Yeah . . . the whole union is going to reverse their vote on my say-so.”
“You can stop this thing where it started,” she says. “Talk to the Brotherhood, get a new campaign going, get them to see this thing a different way.” Then she adds solicitously, “You could help me out a lot, Jay.”
“No thank you,” he says.
“You know, you’re a fool to make this Minty thing public. Somebody could easily use this as evidence that the labor block ain’t all that strong.”
“So you gon’ blackmail me now?” He laughs bitterly. “Well, you got the wrong guy. Do what you want with it, Cynthia. I don’t care.”
“Oh, I know you better than that, Jay,” she says. “Have you forgotten?”
He thinks she’s trying to charm him, and it makes him like her even less than he already does. “These men are coming to you for help,” he says, standing. “If you betray them, that’s on your conscience. Why don’t you try to not let yourself down for once?” He starts for the leather-cushioned door to the out side.
“Jay, wait,” she says behind him. “There’s something else.”
“Good-bye, Cynthia.”
“I need to know why you were asking about the homicide in Fif t h Ward.”
Jay stops at the door, feeling a flutter of worry, and the sorry knowledge that Cynthia is incapable of making anything easy for him. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to ask me any questions about that,” he says.
“She turned herself in, you know.”
“What?” He inches toward Cynthia, not sure he heard her correctly.
“The girl,” Cynthia says. “She turned herself in.” “How do you—”
“The grand jury came down with an indictment this morn ing.”
He’s aware that he’s being watched, studied, that she’s follow ing his every move, reading his reaction. “The cops were going to arrest her anyway. This way her lawyer avoided a perp walk. The arraignment’s this afternoon.”
“I thought you said the evidence was light.”
“They turned up something in a search.”
“The gun?”
There’s something desperate in his tone, a note of panic that makes Cynthia nervous. “Jesus Christ, if you know something, Jay—”
“I don’t.”
“I know you have people out that way. Bernie’s family.”
He holds up a hand.
“I know you’ve done some cases out that way, Jay. I know you’ve got connections in Fifth Ward. If you know something, you need to talk to the authorities . . . the police or the district attorney’s office.”
“I can’t do that, Cynthia. I can’t explain it right now. I just can’t.”
