'Bad enough. He somethin' with a knife.'
'You ever see him in action? I mean, you see him kill somebody?'
'I saw him cut a man in a bar once; loudmouth dude didn't know who Frank was.'
DeWitt's eyes came to life for a moment; he leaned across the seat so far that I could feel his dry breath on my neck. 'I want you to remember something, Easy. I want you to think about when Frank took his knife and stabbed that man.'
I thought about it a second and then I nodded to let him know that I was ready.
'Before he went at him, did he hesitate? Even for a second?'
I thought about the crowded bar down on Figueroa. The big man was talking to Frank's woman and when Frank walked up to him he put his hand against Frank's chest, getting ready to push him away, I suppose. Frank's eyes widened and he threw his head around as if to say to the crowd, 'Look at what this fool is doin'! He deserve t'be dead, stupid as he acts!' Then the knife appeared in Frank's hand and the big man crumpled against the bar, trying to ward off the stroke with his big fleshy arms …
'Maybe just a second, not even that,' I said.
Mr. DeWitt Albright laughed softly.
'Well,' he said. 'I guess I have to see what I shall see.'
'Maybe you could get to the girl when he's out. Frank spends a lot of time on the road. I saw him the other night, at John's, he was dressed for hijacking, so he might be out of town for a couple of more days.'
'That would be best,' Albright answered. He leaned back across the seat. 'No reason to be any messier than we have to, now. You got that photograph?'
'No,' I lied. 'Not on me. I left it at home.'
He only looked at me for a second but I knew he didn't believe it, I don't know why I wanted to keep her picture. It's just that the way she looked out at me made me feel good.
'Well, maybe I'll pick it up after I find her; you know I like to make everything neat after a job … Here's another hundred and take this card too. All you have to do is go down to that address and you can pick up a job to tide you over until something else comes up.'
He handed me a tight roll of bills and a card. I couldn't read the card in that dim light so I shoved it and the money in my pocket.
'I think I can get my old job back so I won't need the address.'
'Hold on to it,' he said, as he turned the ignition. 'You did alright by me, getting this information, and I'm doing right by you. That's the way I do business, Easy; I always pay my debts.'
The drive back was quiet and brilliant with night lights. Benny Goodman was on the radio and DeWitt Albright hummed along as if he had grown up with big bands.
When we pulled up to my car, next to the pier, everything was as it had been when we left. When I opened the door to get out Albright said, 'Pleasure working with you, Easy.' He extended his hand and when he had the snake grip on me again his look became quizzical and he said, 'You know, I was wondering just one thing.'
'What's that?'
'How come you let those boys get around you like that? You could have picked them off one by one before they got your back to the rails.'
'I don't kill children,' I said.
Albright laughed for the second time that night.
Then he let me go and said goodbye.
9
0ur team worked in a large hangar on the south side of the Santa Monica plant. I got there early, about 6 a.m., before the day shift began. I wanted to get to Benny, Benito Giacomo, before they started working.
Once Champion designed a new aircraft, either for the air force or for one of the airlines, they had a few teams build them for a while to get out the kinks in construction. Benito's team would, for instance, put together the left wing and move it on to another group in charge of assembly for the entire aircraft. But instead of assembling the plane a group of experts would go over our work with a magnifying glass to make sure that the procedures they set up for production were good.
It was an important job and all the men were proud to be on it but Benito was so high-strung that whenever we had a new project he'd turn sour.
That's really why he fired me.
I was coming off of a hard shift, we had two men out with the flu, and I was tired. Benny wanted us to stay longer just to check out our work but I didn't want any of it. I was tired and I knew that anything I looked at would have gotten a passing grade, so I said that we should wait until morning. The men listened to me. I wasn't a team leader but Benny relied on me to set an example for others because I was such a good worker. But that was just a bad day. I needed sleep to do the job right and Benny didn't trust me enough to hear that.
He told me that I had to work hard if I wanted to get the promotion we'd talked about; a promotion that would put me just a grade below Dupree.
I told him that I worked hard every day.
A job in a factory is an awful lot like working on a plantation in the South. The bosses see all the workers like they're children, and everyone knows how lazy children are. So Benny thought he'd teach me a little something about responsibility because he was the boss and I was the child.
