Free Big Goodbye, The by Michael Lister Page A

one arm.”
    “I do all right,” I said.
    “I’m sure you do,” he said. “But goin’ up against the locals what pass for muscle around here’s one thing. Takin’ on guys like us is another.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Doesn’t change anything, but it may be true.”
    “Okay, soldier, I understand,” he said. “I’m just wasting my breath here. Doesn’t matter what I say, we’re gonna mix it up ’cause that’s what guys like us do, but I still gotta give you the message I’s hired to just like there was a chance you might actually listen to it.”
    I nodded.
    “Man who hired me thinks it’s best you stay out of politics, away from other men’s wives, and away from hospitals.”
    The big man came to life again, his face showing his pride in himself and the pleasure what he was about to say would bring him. “If you don’t,” he said, “you’ll need a doctor and a hospital of your own.”
    “But not a politician or another man’s wife?” I asked.
    The big man looked confused. The small man smiled.
    “You ought not do that, mister,” the small man said. “That’s just low.”
    “According to you, I’m gonna have a short life,” I said. “Better get my fun while I can.”

Chapter 16
    It cost me extra, but I had Clipper in a uniform. He was banging on the delivery entrance of Rainer’s place on Eleventh Street, a brown parcel in his left hand. A single-bulb light fixture above the door provided the only illumination, and from my position in the back of the delivery truck all I could see of him was his white uniform, the white of his real eye, and his bright white teeth.
    Clipper Jones was a young Negro who had been part of the 99 th Fighter Squadron, 1 st Tactical Unit before suffering the loss of his left eye. He picked up the nickname Clipper while training at Dale Mabry Field because of the way he would so fearlessly dive down toward the Gulf, fly in low and “clip” the tops of the north Florida pine trees.
    The back door of the private sanatorium opened, and Clipper began his routine.
    I was crouched in an old milk truck. One of Clip’s many brothers had converted it into a delivery vehicle. I was attempting to see and hear what was going on near the door.
    “He’s not here,” the dark-haired nurse said.
    It had rained earlier in the night and was threatening to again. The air was thick with moisture. As if steam rising out of the earth from small hidden holes, a low fog hovered over the ground, some of it breaking free to cling to tree branches and gather itself around the lights on buildings and street corners.
    “This here’s gots to be signed fo,” Clipper said. “And it’s gots to be Dr. Rain to do it.”
    “Rainer,” the woman corrected.
    “Rai-n-er,” he repeated slowly.
    I thought he was overdoing it a bit, but he often told me you could never overestimate the superiority white people felt over coloreds.
    He must have been right because of what she did next.
    “Come in,” she said. “I’ll call Dr. Rainer.”
    She turned and began walking inside. Before he followed her, Clipper looked back in my direction and gave me a big, fuck-crackers smile, which was about all I could see.
    When Dale Mabry Field near Tallahassee was expanded from a small airport used by private planes, Eastern Airlines’ DC3s, and National Airlines’ mail carriers to an Army airfield in late 1940, a small black community had been relocated. Clipper’s grandparents had been part of this community. It had never set well with Clipper, and he didn’t mind letting his superiors know it. In fact, his antics in the airplane that earned him his nickname were part of his protest. He had always suspected his eye injury wasn’t an accident—hired me to prove it, but I couldn’t get past the army’s tall green wall of silence and endless miles of red tape.
    Within a few minutes, Clip was opening the back door and waving me in with the gun in his right hand. I climbed out of the truck and joined