Sneaky People: A Novel Read Free Page B

Clarence stated.
    “You know the kind of guy I mean.” Neither was Buddy’s a question.
    Clarence scraped his boot. He was now figuring that Buddy wanted to start a fire that would burn up the cars for the insurance. A Jew had done that to his clothes store in Maywood, which was the proper name for the section known to whites as Darktown and to the colored population as the West Side. A number of people had lived in flats overhead as tenants of the Jew, among them a cousin of Clarence’s, and the Jew had got them out of there before setting the fire: which was reckless of him, because when the insurance inspectors came around afterwards and asked the people if they had seen anything unusual, Clarence’s cousin had said vengefully: “Just that Jew, carrying a can of gas at midnight.” The rooms upstairs had been overrun with rats and the corridor toilet was always full of shit owing to a defective flushing mechanism.
    At this moment Ralph came around the corner, and Buddy sent him away. Next, Leo poked his head through the office door, saying accusingly: “There you are.” Buddy failed to acknowledge this statement, and Leo retreated.
    “The way I’m thinking,” Clarence said suddenly, fixing Buddy with his good eye, “is how much leads to who .”
    Buddy did not relish being eye-pinned by the likes of Clarence, whom in other circumstances he would have stared down. Now, though, it served his needs to be subtle. The less Clarence knew, the better. Once he got hold of the thug, he would conspire to keep Clarence in the dark: surely blood, black blood at that, was not thicker than money. In addition, he and the killer would be linked by murder. Thus he didn’t want a moron who could not understand the equation.
    “Somebody tough,” Buddy said. “But somebody smart.” He meant colored-tough, because it would not take much courage to kill a woman; and darky-smart, which was to say capable of an animal shrewdness but not clever enough to match wits with the man who paid him.
    “I hears the price going up,” said Clarence, who regarded himself as neither tough nor smart but rather sensible . The cousin who informed on the Jew was smart, and his ass was generally out.
    Buddy had not intended to name a figure to Clarence, whose own fee after all was a pair of twelve-dollar shoes, but he now decided that the Negro was too stupid for jealousy.
    “I wouldn’t mind letting go of a couple hundred for a real good job. One down and the other when it’s finished.”
    Two hundred for the black man who burned the place down, and thousands for Buddy when the insurance was paid off: the usual white deal.
    Clarence squinted. “A hundred for tough, and a hundred for smart.”
    “You could say that.” Buddy was toeing the threshold of impatience now: he had no intention of being analyzed by the likes of Clarence, in whose last statement he detected a hint of mockery.
    Clarence let him stew for a while, then said: “When?”
    “Don’t you worry about that. You just bring me the individual, get your shoes, and forget about it. Keep your nose clean, Clarence. You don’t need any more trouble.”
    This was the second reference of Buddy’s to the unsuccessful attempt to steal the car three years before, and it caused the ex-boxer to reflect that having something on another man was in itself a form of insurance. His cousin was a fool: he should have told the Jew, not the insurance people, about the midnight can of gas, threatening to tell them unless the Jew paid off. Yes, Clarence could see that now; but he was no happier for the realization.
    “When?” he repeated. “When should I bring the individual?”
    Mockery again, quoting Buddy’s very phraseology. However Buddy had let himself in for it by misinterpreting Clarence’s first “when,” which he had taken to mean When must the deed be done ?
    He tightened his nuts and said: “Soon as possible.”
    “Tonight?”
    He was strengthened by Clarence’s eagerness,