Room To Swing Read online

  I went to the corner and bought an afternoon paper, looked through it, and twenty minutes later walked slowly back to the luncheonette. Thomas was lounging against the counter, the cigarette pasted to his funny lips, bulling with the other guys. From the relaxed way they were leaning against the counter, they did hard physical work: looked like pugs resting between rounds. I walked away as they came out, went across the street to lean against a parked truck and talk some more as they got a little sun. I stood in the lobby of a building, smoking my pipe and watching Thomas until he went back to work at twelve forty-five. Kay's info said he knocked off at five, leaving me free till then. Life was terrific; a month's work and I was getting it on a silver platter.

  Back at the parking lot I found one of my whitewalls flat. Maybe the attendant did it because he saw a white woman with me, and maybe it was a leaky valve, as he said. My rubber was old. He kept a straight face and, since the tire wasn't cut, I had him put in a new valve and air.

  Sybil works as a long-lines operator, a service assistant— a kind of foreman—and worked a split tour: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., then back at 8 p.m. to work till 11 p.m. She liked the tour because she didn't have to get up early and actually only worked six hours although she was paid for eight. I phoned her at the public phone in the locker room, left a message with some girl that I'd pick her up at two. I called Sid to thank him for recommending me, and to get a line on Miss Robbens, but he was out.

  With an hour to kill I phoned Ted Bailey, but he was busy on another skip-tracing job in the Village. I told him to be in front of his building in a few minutes, I'd drive him downtown.

  When I got out of the army in '48 and went to N.Y.U. on the G.I. Bill, I told Sid I needed a part-time job and he had Bailey take me on as a weekend guard at the department store. Sid is a real sweet guy; he was a pilot and we got drunk together in Rome back in '45, have been friends ever since. Bailey ran a fairly big agency, used seven men in the department store, and was okay. Didn't treat me any different than the rest of his men—he was huffy with all of us. I was called back into service in '50, and when I came out in '53—lucky enough not to go to Korea—the store had its own guards. They were using one of Ted's men for the Friday and Saturday rush. Ted said it wasn't worth bothering with, gave me the job, which was how and why I started my own agency.

  Ted was waiting for me; I didn't have to double-park. He dresses and looks like a fat hick. Actually he's a rough oscar and far from stupid—as a dick. I get a bang out of the way he speaks in grunts—as if talking was a waste of time.

  As he sat down beside me I saw he was still wearing old-fashioned high shoes. Ted said, “What a car for an investigator. An operator should have an ordinary buggy— nothing stands out like this. Jeez, what seats—like I'd slipped off a bar stool. Get my letter?”

  “Thanks. I'll work on it tomorrow. Kind of busy now. Where do you want to go?”

  “Drop me at Sheridan Square. So you're busy, Toussaint?”

  He never called me Touie. “Things have picked up.”

  “You're lucky. Whole damn racket is changing. Today you can't make your pork chops unless you're a regular mechanical whiz, and even then you need contracts. I just hired me a kid who got busted out of engineering school.”

  “That's what I want to talk about. I'm thinking of expanding.”

  He pulled out a cigar and began chewing on it. “Expand where? Why stay in this two-bit racket? Ain't enough money in Harlem to make it worth your while.”

  “That's what I mean by expanding—out of Harlem.”

  “Naw, naw. Too many guys in the game now. No work. Divorce stuff, skip tracing, guard duty; they don't amount to a hill of beans. Burns, Pinkerton, Holmes have the big guard jobs sewed up. Know why I hired this engineer, why I'm paying him as much as I take home? Only money around these days is in industrial spying. For that you need bugs and recorders and all kinds of electrical gadgets, and it adds up to nothing but a lousy overhead unless you got an 'in.'”

  “Are you getting any of this industrial gravy?”

  He gave his cold cigar a workout between his teeth as he said, “I'm getting the wrong end of the stick. Toussaint, in the old days, if a guy was sober and willing to put in hours, he could make a fair living, even big money if he wanted to be a rat and labor fink. Now... I got a... a small manufacturer, coming out with a new cheap line. His success will depend on when a competitor, the big company in the business, puts their product on the market. You see, if my boy comes out first, the big company can undersell him, so he has to catch them when they're in full production and no time to cut his throat. All he can pay is a lousy grand.”

  “What's lousy about a thousand bucks?”

  “What I'm trying to tell you, it don't mean nothing no more. Takes me a week and plenty of dough to find out where one of the big company's executives hangs around. Then I hire a broad to pick him up and we got her joint rigged like an electrical plant, with guys outside listening to the conversation. £ got to pay for three nights of loving and whiskey before Lover says anything we can use. The nut comes out to over nine hundred bucks—where's my pork chops?”

  “Why did you take it?”

  “Had to; only way to get in with these industrial big boys. You should see the bunk I give out with—make a presentation, everything typed up with wide margins, in an expensive folder. This guy, he plays golf with a real big boy, washing-machine manufacturer who's interested in learning about the new models due next year. But you see me on a skip-tracing deal now, still hustling for a lousy ten bucks. Pull over there, in front of the cigar store. I'll blow.”

  I double-parked and Ted got out, straightened his clothes and cursed my bucket seats. Then he said, “You're still young enough to get in something else. If there ain't nothing in the racket for us wh—downtown boys, what's in it for you?”

  “I'm doing okay.”

  “Sure, for this month. And next month you're bouncing drunks at dances for pennies. Toussaint, hop on that case I gave you.”

  “I will. Keep your blood pressure down, Ted.”

  I drove down to Canal Street and parked outside the phone building, lit my pipe. Miss Robbens said the TV studio had other work for investigators; if I buttered her up, remained her pet Negro for a while—how much of it could I get? Ted had said the main thing was contacts; she could be that. First thing I had to do was move out of my bedroom-office, put up a big-time front. It would cost but it was worth the gamble.

  Sybil came out with a group of women and as usual she liked the idea of my Jaguar waiting for her, the impression we both made on the other women—all of them white. Although my darkness was a real “problem” to Sybil, with the phone-company white girls she made a point of giving me a big fat kiss whenever I picked her up, as if to prove she was a Negro and proud of it, and all that.

  Opening the door, I watched her walk toward the car, the sway of her solid hips. I hadn't seen her for two days and now she had a blond streak in her auburn hair—the newest style. It looked phony on her.

  Sybil was what my old man used to call “tinted whites”: her skin was a creamy white and her hair was “good” (an expression that used to make the old man mount his soapbox at once). I suppose Sybil could have easily “passed.” She had the kind of colour and features that if you saw her in Harlem you'd assume she was “coloured.” If you saw her downtown you might think she was Spanish, if you thought about it at all. When I was out with Sybil I often collected the same kind of “looks” I'd picked up with Kay. I suppose the reason Sybil didn't pass was her old-fashioned ideas about colour—the prestige she thought her lightness gave her in Harlem.

  Sybil was a habit with me. We had been going together for about three years. Her parents were from one of the islands and when she was a kid in Washington, D.C., Sybil had tried hard to lose her accent; now she worked harder at keeping it, spoke with a kind of clipped English. She was twenty-nine years old, had married a jerk when she was a kid, worked in an aircraft factory during the wa
r to put her husband through med school. When the army took over his education this louse divorced Sybil and married a Chicago widow who owned real estate. Sybil was a habit, as I said, and most times a very comfortable habit. We hit it off, although sometimes her phony standards made me go straight up. Like the few times I'd realized how she felt about my dark skin, or like she would never come to my room, although Roy and Ollie knew all about us.

  We kissed, her mouth cool, a good smell of perfume about her. “This is a surprise, Touie.”

  Cutting across Canal to the highway, I said, “I was downtown on a case. A big fish, honey. I'm going to make fifteen hundred dollars!” As we raced up the highway, the Hudson rough and cold looking, I told her as much about the case as I could. Then my ideas about opening a real office downtown, perhaps going to school for a month or so to learn about these electrical gadgets.

  Sybil thought I ought to pay up my debts, bank the rest, forget my big ideas. But of course she was thrilled about me getting the dough and we were doing fine. Two mistakes. I mean driving along the Hudson in my Jag.

  We reached her brownstone basement one-room “apartment”—with a view of the river, if you stuck your head far enough out the window to break your neck (and for which she was paying seventy-two dollars a month). As I took off my coat and tie, I mentioned the post-office deal. That tore it.

  “Oh, Touie, darling!” Sybil said, putting everything she had into a big hug. “That's the real news. When do you start?”

  “I don't know,” I said, kissing her, running my hands through her soft hair. And wondering, for no damn reason, how many generations it took to produce her creamy skin. “I don't even know if I'm going to take it.”

  I felt her tighten up before she stepped back out of my arms. “Why not? It's civil service, what we've always talked about.”

  “Sure, S.O.P. for a Negro. That's why they call the main post office Uncle Tom's Cabin. Sybil, honey, this TV contract changes things. This is my big chance to start a real agency.”

  “You sound like a little boy infatuated with private eyes,” she said coldly, taking off her coat. She was wearing a simple striped blouse and skirt that showed off her chunky figure. Sybil was very style conscious, mainly because she had this crazy idea a coloured woman had to prove she knew how to dress. The trouble was, often the “latest” styles weren't intended for Sybil's solid figure.

  Hanging up my jacket I took out my wallet. “How much do I owe you, honey?”

  She pulled back the Japanese screen from the kitchenette, started the coffee working. “Thirty-five dollars.”

  I gave her fifty bucks extra. “Buy yourself something.”

  Very pleased, she thanked me with a tiny kiss, pocketed the money, and went on with her cooking. I started on my specialty—a tossed salad.

  She put on eggs and sausages, humming to herself. I knew exactly how her mind was working. As if I were an excited kid that needed cooling off, a moment later she said, “Touie, this is your big opportunity, so let's not talk nonsense. You'll sub for a few years, but even so, you'll be making about four thousand, and what with my job we can easily afford a new apartment, perhaps in the houses being built on 125th Street, interracial, too. We'll buy all new furniture, and a new car. Or a house out in St. Albans with—”

  “What's wrong with my Jag?”

  “Nothing, but in time we'll buy a new one. Darling, this is security, you know that as well as I do.”

  “A top detective agency, that can mean real folding money.”

  “All right, get it out of your system, talk about it. Be honest, dear, you only got into the detective business by chance. What do you really know about it?”

  “Told you, one of the things I'm going to use the dough for, study up on these electrical things. Hon, the private-eye business has changed. Now it's finding out for CBS what new programs NBC has in mind. Big-money stuff. Ted Bailey gave me the lowdown today.”

  “I suppose these big concerns are waiting to give the business to you—a black boy?”

  “Seems to me I landed this new assignment just because I am coloured.” I don't like light-skinned people, even Sybil, calling me black.

  “Touie Moore, all the time I've known you, you've been rubbing pennies together. If you weren't living in that dump with those other two no-goods, you'd have been on the street most of the time. Only real job you have is that department-store weekend thing, gives you a great big twenty a week. Bouncer, guard—how degrading can you get? Let's face it, you paid tax on seventeen hundred dollars last year. I never could understand why you insist on sticking to your badge. You're personable, well dressed, you could have made double that as a sales clerk. You told me yourself this Sid offered you such a job. But no, Dick Tracy has to keep on playing cops and robbers.”

  “At least my time was my own, and now it's going to pay off.”

  “What time was your own? Staying up all night at dances, holding up drunks, getting vomited on? You took all these civil-service exams because you know in your heart detective work is a blind alley.”

  I set up the bridge table as she took out the dishes, opened a bottle of beer. “Sybil, I'm not saying it's been easy, or that I can make it. But neither am I rushing into carrying mail for the rest of my life. I want to think it over, carefully.”

  “Go ahead, but there's nothing to think about. And let's not argue while we eat. It's bad for the digestion.”

  We ate listening to radio music and I was mixed up. I could understand her point; hell, she'd been making triple my income for years. Still, I couldn't dismiss the agency idea as if Miss Robbens had never been in my office.

  While I washed the dishes Sybil went into the large closet she called a dressing room, and which at one time had been the pantry of the house. I was sitting on the couch, lighting my pipe, when Sybil stepped out in a long lacy nothing, modeling it for my benefit. She came over, tripping like a Maltese kitten, sat on my lap, gently pulled the pipe from my mouth and planted a long hot kiss.

  Sybil and I were most compatible, but now it left me cold. I was getting the full treatment, very full. I lifted her off my lap, dropped her beside me. Her eyes were big with surprise, maybe mocking me. I said, “Let's talk sense. You see, honey, another thing I thought we could do with the money is get married.”

  “We'll get married the day you're appointed a regular carrier.”

  I puffed on my pipe hard. If you can't get a doctor or undertaker, marry a civil-service worker, live in the Installment rut. “I asked you to marry me a year ago; why did you say no? Be honest.”

  “I wasn't sure I was in love with you.”

  “Honey, you haven't been seeing any other John, so that sounds phony to me. Was it because I'm dark?”

  She shrugged. “Touie, what are you trying to make me say? All right, when I first knew you, I admit I didn't like the idea you were dark. But that certainly wasn't why I turned you down, why I'm doing it now. Touie, you know how hard it is for our people to land decent jobs, and when one does, she has to be careful—so many men want to marry her for a meal ticket.”

  “That's stupid.”

  “Touie Moore, don't you talk to me like that in my house! And it isn't stupid. You know what I went through with my louse of a husband. Seems when a man can't find himself, he finds me. I don't want—”

  “I'm not your ex-husband.”

  “And I never want you to be. Suppose we married now, you'd move in here and long as I kept my job you could play detective the rest of your life. I'm not saying you're lazy, Touie, because you're not. But we'd never get anyplace.”

  “Where's 'anyplace,' Sybil?”

  “You know what I mean; with a steady double income, we can live well. Touie, you're almost thirty-five. It's time you settled down. I know, the war ruined your chances for professional football, and the five or seven years you were an army officer—a nice vacation. This is the first civil-service job you've been called for; you simply can't pass it up!”

  “You so
und like I'm on relief.”

  “You want honest talk? You aren't far from relief. Ollie carries your rent, I feed you. The Jaguar, the good clothes —that's all empty front.”

  That hit me like a jab to the stomach. “And what the devil is living in a swank apartment, joining these dicty social clubs, the drunken dances, but a front? Sybil, the main thing is our being together. Marriage has to be more than a money partnership.”

  “Movie dialogue, Touie, white movie dialogue. What's wrong in wanting to live in a new apartment? God knows I've lived in enough old rooms and run-down flats!”