Something would have to be done about him. And
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about the two intruders, because she still had more Lippincotts to kill.
She thought of the two. The Oriental. The young American. And as she thought of Remo and his deep eyes and the smile that bared his teeth and moved his lips but never extended to his eyes, she shuddered involuntarily and pulled the sheet up around her body.
They had to go. In the case of the American, it was a shame, but she could do it. She reached for the telephone.
Ruby Gonzalez had hit every saloon on Twenty-second Street searching for Flossie. She hadn't realized that white folks had so many saloons, that white saloons had so many drunks and that so many drunks thought they were God's gift to young unescorted black women. Not that any of them throught so much about it that they would buy her a drink. She had bought her own in the first six saloons, a vile concoction of orange juice and wine. She had been raised on it as orange juice and champagne but there was no champagne to be found in these Twenty-second Street saloons.
She had started out by hanging out in the taverns, hoping to get someone in conversation and find out about Flossie, but that hadn't worked, and so, after six bars and twelve OJ and wines, she had stopped drinking and stopped hanging out. Instead, she walked into the bar, accosted the bartender and asked if he knew where she could find Flossie.
Bartender: "Who wants to know?"
Ruby: "You know who she is?"
Bartender: "No."
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Ruby: "Big fat woman. Blonde."
Bartender: "Why you want her?"
Ruby: "You know her?"
Bartender: "No. What do you want her for?"
Ruby: "She's my nanny, sucker, and I come to take her back home to Tara."
Bartender: "Oh, yeah?"
Next bar.
And now she was down to the last bar on Twenty-second Street, as far west as one could go without falling into the Hudson River. Or, more accurately, onto it because the river debris was so thick, the water had the consistency of limestone. If the river were any dirtier, you could ice skate on it in July.
She walked into the final bar.
Pay dirt.
At the end of the bar, she saw a blonde woman partially sitting on the stool.
The woman overflowed the stool, her giant buttocks surrounding it, covering the top and hiding it from view. She wore a red and blue flowered dress. Her upper arms were massive and her hair a tangled mass of every-which-way strings. Ruby thought that if it hadn't been for the fat and the dirt and the ugly dress and the uncombed hair and the bleary blue eyes and the double and triple chins and the arms that were shaped like legs of lamb, big legs of lamb, Flossie would still have been homely. Her nose was too broad and her mouth too small and her eyes were set too close together in her head. Even at her best, she would have been pretty bad, Ruby decided.
Ruby ignored the surprised look of the bartender and the greetings of four bums sitting at the bar and
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walked toward the back and sat on the stool next to Flossie.
The fat woman turned to stare at her. Ruby Gonzalez smiled, that quick sudden smile that could melt people's hearts and turn stranger into life-long friend. "Hi, Flossie," she said. "Have a drink?" Ruby nodded toward the empty beer glass and took a five dollar bill from her jacket pocket where she kept saloon money. It invited trouble to open a purse and fish in a wallet for cash in places like this. Too many people watched and wondered.
Flossie nodded. "Sure," she said. "Roger," she called. "A drink for me and my friend." She turned back to Ruby. "Do I know you?" she asked thickly. "I don't think so 'cause I don't have too many friends of the black persuasion."
Her voice was slurred and she spoke slowly, as if trying to make sure that she said nothing wrong, nothing offensive, at least until the beer was bought and paid for.
"Sure," Ruby said. "I met you once with Zack." "Zack? Zack? Oh, yeah. Zack. No, you didn't. I never met you with Zack. Zack doesn't like Negroes."
"I know," Ruby said. "He and I, well, we were never friends but we worked together on a case once."
The bartender appeared. Ruby ordered two beers. Flossie was still shaking her head. "Never saw you," she said. "Woulda remembered. Remember everybody as skinny as I used to be."
"I'll tell you when it was," Ruby said. "It was one night, maybe three, four months ago. I bumped into Zack down near Seventh Street where he lives, and
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we rode up to Twenty-third Street on the subway, and he said he was going to see you and we walked over near your place, and he met you downstairs, and we just waved at each other. I think you were going to get something to eat."
"Not Zack," Flossie said. "Zack never buys a meal."
"Maybe you were buying," Ruby said.
"Probably," Flossie agreed. "Give a man everything, best years of your life and have to feed him too."
"How is Zack anyway?" Ruby said. "Seen him lately?"
"Don't want to talk about it," Flossie said.
"Oh? Why not? What's he gone and done now?"
Flossie screwed up her face in intense concentration as if she were trying to recollect not only what Zack had done but exactly who he was.
"Oh, yeah," she said finally. "He left. He just walks out one night and doesn't come back. Leaves me without nothing to drink or eat. Leaves me alone. Had to go out on the street again to get something to drink and eat."
"When was that?" asked Ruby. The beers came
and she hoisted her glass, clinked with Flossie's and
toasted her impending good luck. "When was that?"
Flossie drained half the glass at a sip. "I don't
know. Not too good on time."
"Two weeks ago?" Ruby said.