Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(46)
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Downtown. A donkey after all. He took the 1 train to Christopher and headed east. Ten-thirty on a Wednesday night and the cold spell relenting, the Village streets were busy. Pepper was accustomed to the 125th Street version of these folks, the bummy clothes and insolent posture. He had difficulty wrapping his head around the white downtown version, particularly in the realm of facial hair. Hippie attire aside, black men generally kept their beards and mustaches fit and sharp, their Afros immaculate. These white kids walked around with stuff on their heads that—well, dead alley cats rotting behind garbage cans kept it more correct. The new shit was always upon you and you had to adjust, such was life, but the new shit came so fast these days, and it was so wily and unlikely, that he had a hard time keeping up.
He crossed Sixth Ave. The Twin Towers still startled him when they lurched into view, freed by this or that turn around a street corner. Looming over the city like two cops trying to figure out what they can bust you for.
The Sassy Crow was down MacDougal, on Minetta across from Café Wha? He remembered seeing the club’s mascot on the sign when Hazel brought him down here to see that jazz combo last summer. The crow was coony—the black bird’s big white eyes and cigar recalling some minstrel shit. He related as much to Hazel and she responded along the lines of “You know white people love that stuff.” The sax-led combo had been playing next door at a tiny place called the Kaleidoscope Wheel. When Hazel suggested they stay for the second set, he did not hesitate. He never did refuse her a thing, did he? It was a nice night. He couldn’t remember the name of the band, but A Bunch of Squirrels in a Burlap Sack Being Beaten by Hammers would not have been false advertising.
He descended the vertiginous steps to the basement club, into a physical reek of stale beer. Pepper disapproved of places with only one way in and out. Trapped smells, trapped people. The bouncer at the bottom of the stairs was a beefy crimson-faced white guy in a leather biker jacket, with a long beard cinched by multicolored rubber bands. In his work clothes (which were his always clothes), denim trousers and a brown canvas trucker jacket, Pepper didn’t resemble the usual clientele. He gave his name as Zippo Flood, and the guy waved him in. Roscoe Pope’s manager had put the director on the list.
The comedian had not been on set yet—they weren’t doing his scenes until next Monday—but Pepper had already heard tales of the man’s erratic behavior. Noise complaints from other guests at the Hotel McAlpin, an implication of midnight bongos, a transvestite hooker who beat the night manager with her high heels when asked to stop smoking cigars in the elevator. According to Zippo, Pope and Lucinda Cole had some sort of history out in Hollywood, and the hotel manager said that the night she disappeared, the staff had seen her with Roscoe. When Zippo called his room, Roscoe told him to go fuck himself. Hence Pepper’s mission downtown.
He squeezed through the mob and pried open a spot along the wall through a familiar combo of physicality and glares. The room contained nine small round cocktail tables, all taken, and the crowd jostled in every free space. Pope currently had a hit record in Memo from Dr. Goodpussy and while he was in town he was trying out new material in a series of secret gigs, Zippo had said. The secret was out.
The opener was onstage, the Negro ventriloquist Leroi Banks and his li’l buddy Mr. Charles. Pepper had caught him on Red Skelton a few times. Mr. Charles’s Afro had kept pace with the times and now possessed an audacious circumference. Banks had dressed him in jeans and a jean jacket over a red satin shirt with a yellow polka-dot ascot. The ventriloquist dressed square, as befitting a straight man, in dark slacks and a yellow argyle sweater. Cigarette smoke slow-danced in a cone under the stage lights.
Mr. Charles said, “Halfway to Vegas I get up to stretch, dig, and I start rapping to the stewardess. Asks me if I’ve ever heard of the ‘Mile High Club.’?” He had a deep voice, and his head swished back and forth, painted eyelids fluttering.
Leroi whistled. “Man, I hope you kept it discreet.”
“I thought so—but when I got back to my seat, my old lady had my number.”
“She called you out?”
“I had sawdust on my pants.”
You never see a fat ventriloquist. Pepper was of the mind that this reflected the parasitic nature of the relationship, wherein the puppet leeches the life essence of the puppeteer. Which gave him an idea for a diet craze: the mass adoption of puppet sidekicks. Send the price of lumber through the roof. From time to time his mind turned to business ventures.
Pepper crossed his arms through the next routine, wherein man and puppet debated the finer points of romance, with the former endorsing the gentlemanly approach and the latter a more aggressive system. Vulgarities were expressed. “You a sap,” Mr. Charles decided, “a stone-cold sap.” If Pepper had a dummy that talked to him like that, he’d choke the motherfucker. Sitting on a man’s lap.
Leroi Banks and his friend took a bow—Pepper got the sense the applause was more for the approach of the main attraction. There was a white couple seated at a table a few feet away, with an extra chair. The woman wore a dress with a bright floral pattern, and the man a slim black suit, with horn-rimmed glasses. He’d been writing things down in a pad—a critic for a newspaper or a G-man investigating an obscenity case. Pepper sat down and turned the chair away from the table. He nodded at the white couple, who traded nervous looks and moved their cocktails close. Look, his lower back was sore from the movie job. Usually he didn’t work so many days in a row.