Pleading Guilty

home, because Gino might pick her up there. Instead, she'd grab a taxi, have it circle the block twice to see if she was being followed. Maybe in the movies coppers can tail somebody for days unseen, but in real life it takes four cars at least, someone to go in every direction, and if the mark knows you're there, nine times out of ten you get lost or he's flipping you off in the rearview or sending you a round when you follow him into a tavern. If she came away without company, we agreed Brushy would go to a chain hotel three blocks down. Just check in for the night. Leave a key at the desk. And buy me a toothbrush.

I told her to take off first now. I waited in the vestibule between the doors and she rapped once to signal the hallway was clear. Then I gave her a few minutes to get a lead and take any trailing companions with her. Naturally some old biddy with flossed-up beauty-parlor hair came in then and did a triple-take and a haughty who-are-you look, and I had to pirouette around and play like I thought this all-pink enclosure was actually the men's room and then bow my way back out the door.

No Pigeyes in sight, none of his pals. I put on a winter hat and drew up my muffler and went out to see if I could talk a hack into taking a ride at night into the West End. I was thinking about Brushy. She had kissed me goodbye in the bathroom, a long, lingering embrace full of all her spunk and ardor, and issued fateful advice before disappearing: 'Don't get another rash.'

XXV

THE SECRET LIFE OE KAM ROBERTS, PART TWO

I got to the West End with more than an hour and a half to spare and I spent the time in a little Latin bar on the corner near the Bath where almost no English was spoken. I sat sipping soda pops, sure every second that I was going to break down and order a drink. I was thinking about Brushy and not enjoying it much, wondering what-all that was coming to, whether I wanted what she did or could give it, and as a result, I was in one of my most attractive moods, refusing to move my elbows and waiting for somebody to try to hoist my no-good Anglo ass.

But the fellas here were pretty good-natured. They were watching one of those taped boxing matches from Mexico City on the bar TV, commenting en espanol, and taking peeks now and then at yours truly, figuring all in all I was too big to mess with. Eventually I got into the mood, joshing with them, throwing around my four or five words of Spanish, and recalling my longtime conclusion that a neighborhood joint like this might be the single best class of places on earth. I was more or less raised at The Black Rose, a terrible thing to admit maybe, considering the rumpot I turned out to be, but in a neighborhood of tenements and tiny homes, people longed for a place where they could expand, lift an elbow without knocking down the crockery. At the Rose, it was all right if your wife came; there were kids running round the tables and jerking on their mothers' sleeves; there was singing and those jokes. Humans warmed by one another's company. And me, as a kid, I couldn't ever wait to get out of there, to blow the whole scene. I recollected this with chagrin, but suspected for reasons I couldn't explain that I'd end up feeling the same way if you put me back there today.

Ten o'clock even, I headed out and walked down the alley. This was a big-city neighborhood where the cops and the mayor long ago installed those orange sodium lights with their garish candlepower that seemed to turn the world black and white, but the alley was still all kinds of menacing shadows — garbage cans and dumpsters, sinister alcoves and iron-barred doorways, a lot of lurking spots for Mr S/D, Stranger Danger, to smile and wield his knife. Walking on, I had the usual dry rot in the mouth and watery knees. I heard a grating clank and stopped dead. Someone was out here waiting for me. I reminded myself that was how it was supposed to be, I was meeting somebody.

When I got closer, I saw a figure beckoning. It was the Mexican, Jorge, Mr Third World Anger, who'd questioned me the day I was down here. He stood in the alley in bathroom slippers and an iridescent blue silk robe. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets and you could see the great puffs of his breath hazing above him in a blade of light angling from the doorway behind. He chucked his face in my direction and said, 'Eh.'

Bert was inside, out of sight of the door. We seemed to be in a supply area behind the locker room, and he greeted me as eagerly as he had the other night. Meanwhile, Jorge engaged the dead bolt on the door and padded off. Apparently he was going back to sleep. He paused to poke his head down the hall.

'When you leave, lock it. And, men, don't leave nobody see your ass. I don' want no fuckin shit here. I tole you a long time ago, hombre, you was fucked up, all fucked up.' He said this to Bert, but he pointed at me. 'I tole you, too.'

Jorge, Bert said, had to get up at four, arrange the stones which had been in the oven firing all night, and make the place ready for the bathers who'd begin arriving as early as 5:30 a.m. I wondered where Jorge stood with the outfit guys. There were a lot of them that came around here to steam off the stink of corruption and ugly deeds. Jorge, I suspected, kept everyone's secrets. But if a guy with a tommy gun or a coat hanger knocked on the front door now, Jorge'd point out where we were and go back to sleep. It was a tough life.

I told Bert we had to talk.

'How about the Bath?' he asked. 'You know, oven's on. It's blow-your-brains-out hot in there. It'll be great. Get all that oil and stuff right up to the skin. How about it?'

I had some thoughts, silly bigoted ones, about sitting around naked with Bert, even wrapped in a bedsheet, and then I began to feel sheepish and stupid, sure that if I said no he'd read that as the motive. So we hung our clothes in the lockers and Bert found the way down, both of us in the ocher-colored bedsheets cinched at our bellies and worn much like skirts. Bert didn't dare burn a light near a window. The shower room outside the bath remained dark, and the bath itself was lit only by a single bulb that left a gloomy light the color of tea. The stones had all been shoveled back into the oven and the room was arid, the great fire roasting the air. Even so, the place still had a vaguely vernal scent. Bert cracked the door a bit on the oven and then sat himself down on the top bench in the stepped wooden room and made exultant noises in the withering heat.

You'd have thought he had no troubles, chatting away about the Super Bowl, until I asked him to tell me on the level how it had been. He looked down then between his knees and didn't answer. Scary times, I suppose. Here was a fella who'd flown wartime missions, who knew what it was like being throttled by fright. But time had passed; the imagination takes over; honest memories fade. The pain of fear had plainly surprised him.

‘I been eating fried food. Drinking bad water, man. Can't tell what's gonna get me first. You know?' He smiled. Loopy old Bert. He thought he was funny. Lead from the tap or a gun barrel was lead either way.

'And where the hell have you been hiding out?' I asked.

He laughed at the question.

'Brother,' he said and laughed again. 'Here, there, and everywhere. Seeing the sights. Tried to keep moving.'

'Well, let's take today, for instance. Where'd you start out?'

'Today? Detroit.'

'Doing what?'

He fidgeted in the dense heat while words evaded him.

'Orleans had a game up there last night,' he said finally. He was looking the other way as he said it and he didn't say any more. I got the picture: Bert was seeing all the best places, Detroit and La Salle-Peru, chasing Orleans, romancing on game nights in funky motels, places like the U Inn.

'And what about money? What've you been doing to live?'

'I had a credit card in another name.' 'Kam Roberts?'

That startled him momentarily. He'd forgotten what I knew.

'Right. I thought it'd be better than using my own, they'd have a harder time tracking me down, but they did anyway.'

‘I thought Orleans used that card.'

‘I had one, he had one. We scissored them finally. The cards were about to expire anyway. But we piled up some cash. That's okay. What the hell do I need? A motel with cable, I'm cool. It's just those guys, man. They were right on us. They were checking at stores where Orleans used the card, stuff like that. Scared the hell out of us both. Man.' He looked at me. 'Those guys were cops, you're saying?'