by Jada M Davis
Willa Ree.
He walked up the street, passed dingy-fronted cafés and beer joints, dark and closed, and hock shops and liquor stores.
A dog, dirty and thin, ribs showing and hipbones stretching its skin, sniffed at his heels before trotting out into the street.
A car came around a corner, going fast, and the driver made no attempt to miss the dog.
“The son-of-a-bitch,” Willa Ree said curiously.
Blood oozed from the dog’s mouth and nostrils. Willa Ree picked it up in his arms, heedless of the blood, and carried it to the curb. He put it down, going on hands and knees to pat its head. And then he walked away.
The dog whined.
Willa Ree stopped, looked back, and returned to the dog. He picked it up, muttered soft curses, and bashed it against the curb. He threw the body into the gutter and walked away.
Two blocks, and the buildings were larger and in better repair. A café was open, filled with work-clothed roughnecks and drillers, but he did not stop.
Two more blocks, and he was in the main business center of the town. He passed by two banks, several jewelry stores, and glanced at signs fronting clothing stores, hardware stores, theatres. He passed a four-story hotel.
The streets were deserted.
At a corner, he stopped and looked back down the street, as if wondering whether or not to return to the railroad. With a shrug, he turned down a side street and walked slowly for half a block. There were no cars at the curb, no other person on the street. Wind played idly with a loose newspaper, turning it over and over and sliding it along the gutter.
Ree walked on, his footsteps clicking on the pavement, slowly clickity-clicking on the pavement. He slapped at a parking meter idly, paused and looked up and down the street. No one insight. He went over to a store window and looked at a display of wrist watches and rings.
Almost casually, almost slowly, he lifted his right foot and kicked the window. Glass shattered and fell tinkling, loud in the empty stillness of the street. With his left hand, he snatched three wrist watches and two rings.
And then he was running down an alley and across the street at the next block. Walking now, not hurriedly, and whistling a little.
He reached the neoned café, opened the door, and entered. He sat down at a booth near the front, ignoring the man seated across from him.
A waitress came. He ordered coffee, looked around the room, felt for a cigarette with a hand that knew there was none.
“Have one of mine,” the man across the table said.
Ree took the cigarette and leaned across the table and accepted the man’s proffered light. He sucked in smoke, held it, and exhaled. He drank his coffee and smoked.
“New in town?” the man asked.
“Fairly new.”
“Looking for a job?”
“Depends on the job.”
“Well,” the man said, “there’s lots of work in the fields.”
“Not for me.” Ree laughed and shook his head. “None of that for me. I’m no oil man. I’m a policeman.”
“A policeman, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“An, ah, unattached policeman, eh?”
“For the moment.”
“More coffee?”
“Yeah,” Ree said, grinning. “Thanks.”
“You had breakfast?”
“My belly’s growling, mister. From hunger.”
“How about ham and eggs?”
“Sounds good.”
The man called a waitress and ordered. Turning to Ree, he held out his hand. “My name’s Halliday.”
“Glad to know you. My name’s Ree. Willa Ree.”
“I believe I might be able to help you, Mr. Ree. In fact, you may help me, too.”
Willa Ree ate. The man smoked in silence.
When he finished his breakfast, Ree accepted another cigarette and light. He barely glanced at the policeman coming through the door.
The policeman was short, fat, graying. His red face was covered with perspiration. He grunted his way across the room, scanning the faces of the diners, and waddled out again.
Willa Ree snuffed out his cigarette. “You need a new watch, Mr. Halliday?”
“You sell watches?” Halliday’s eyes were amused.
“Yeah.” He slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out a wrist watch. He slid it across the table.
“Ten dollars.”
“Just for you, fifteen. And breakfast,” Ree said.
“Fifteen and breakfast,” Halliday said. He drew bills from his pocket, peeled off a ten and a five, and gave them to Ree.
“Think you could use a ring? Another watch?”
“I guess that’ll be enough bargains for today, Mr. Ree. Now I’ll offer you a bargain. You go to city hall and ask to see Chief Bronson. Tell him I sent you. I have a hunch he can use you on the force.”
“I’ll do that.”
Ree turned to leave, but Halliday called, grinning, “You stole the watches, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t kid me, son.”
Ree shrugged. “Then I might as well blow.”
“You see Bronson in the morning,” Halliday said. “I think I need a man like you around.”
Chapter Four
The mayor heard the whistle, the whoo-ooo-oooing, shrilly whoo-ooo-oooing whistle, and sat up in bed.
“I told you not to eat so much supper,” his wife said.
The mayor grunted. If he could just get that weight off his stomach, that leady dead weight, he’d be all right, he thought, and burped.
The trouble was that his apparatus was worn out, he thought glumly. And yet, other people still had regular elimination, people no younger than he—maybe not so young. Maybe he wasn’t getting enough of the natural juices, maybe that was it, and maybe some doctor could tell him something to take that would allow him normal elimination.
It was getting to the point where he sized people up by their regularity. Healthy-looking people, those people with a lot of energy and get up and go, he figured, were as regular as clockwork. The mayor resented people like that.
When a man had his natural juices and normal elimination, what else did he need? It would be easy for a healthy man to get to the top, but hard as hell for a man who hadn’t had normal elimination for twenty years.
Take a man like Halliday, for instance. There was a man who... Well, there was a man who—that’s all there was to it—a driver, a pusher, full of vinegar, a getter of things done, a man who wanted something and didn’t know what he wanted, but who settled for money.
Give him a good case of indigestion and he wouldn’t be so damned pushy. Make him so constipated he’d go around feeling as if his mother’s milk was still in his stomach, packed down by all the steaks and beans and potatoes he’d eaten in all the years since he was a baby, and he wouldn’t be so eager to tie the town in a neat package.
Take Messner, the sheriff. There was a normal man. Hell, he probably had rocks in his stomach, like chickens, to grind the food to paste, and gravity did the rest.
The mayor groaned out of bed and padded to the bathroom, his potty little stomach jiggling gently, side to side with a slightly up-and-down motion so that it was more circular than side to side or up and down.
He sat for thirty minutes, hearing the whoo-ooo-oooing of the train fade away.
Finally the mayor padded back to bed.
“I told you not to eat so much,” his wife said.
▫ ▫ ▫
Arthur Fry didn’t hear the whistle, but his wife did. And that was just as bad as being awake and hearing the whistle, because his wife heard it every morning and every morning she couldn’t go back to sleep. And so she lay there thinking.
When she thought, which was often, her thoughts invariably turned to the sex-filled magazines she read constantly. And, invariably, she shook her husband awake.
“Let’s have a party,” she said, as alway
s.
“Leemy alone,” Fry grunted.
“Let’s have a party,” his wife said.
“Oh, hell!”
“Well, if you feel that way about it!”
“That’s the way I feel, damnit!”
She turned over and pouted, and now there was no use trying to placate her or love her up because she’d pout until the damned train came through whistling its brains out the next morning.
Arthur Fry couldn’t sleep.
He’d worried before going to sleep, and now his mind took up where it left off, rethinking thoughts he’d thought before he went to sleep, churning the same thoughts, chewing the same thoughts, and he couldn’t go to sleep.
That damned Messner! And that damned Halliday!
They’d come to his office and asked him to pick a man for chief of police.
“What’s the matter with Bronson?” he’d asked.
“Too old, for one thing,” Halliday said. “Won’t cooperate with Sheriff Messner for another. Just won’t play ball.”
“Well, you need one honest man in a front job like that,” Fry had told them. “Let Messner do the work and let poor old Bronson browse along.”
“He’s getting in the way,” Sheriff Messner said.
“Well, why come to me?” Fry asked. “After all, I’m the county attorney, not the police commissioner. It’s your job to pick a man, Halliday.”
“I’ve racked my brain,” Halliday confessed, “and I can’t think of a man.”
“In other words,” Fry said, “you want a man with a good name and a good following, but who’s got sense enough to take orders and play ball.”
Both men nodded.
“Well,” Fry continued, “what about one of the sheriff’s deputies?”
“Punks,” Halliday said.
“I’ll think about it,” Fry promised. “I’ll come up with somebody.”
Halliday patted him on the shoulder in that patronizing way of his. “I knew we could count on you,” he said.
But now, in bed, with his wife pouting because he couldn’t get romantic before breakfast, Arthur Fry couldn’t think of a man. There were lots of men, but none with a following, no vote getters.
Well, hell, he thought, let Halliday and Messner lose sleep over it.
He shifted his thoughts to his island, dream island, far out in the South Seas somewhere. It was an old day-night dream, one he’d never been able to complete, but though he dreamed the same parts over and over and always swore to finish the thing, he never did. He always went to sleep.
It started on a yacht, with a beautiful girl cutting him, scorning him, giving him the cold shoulder. It ended with a storm, with him being knocked unconscious, and while he was unconscious all the other members of the yachting party put off in boats, all but one girl, the girl, the beautiful girl. The yacht was blown into a quiet harbor, floating in deep water to the very shore of a beautiful island. And he was hard to get and the girl used scant clothes and practically no clothes to capture him, but he was hard to get and gave her the cold shoulder. She was lovely....
Arthur Fry nudged his wife gently and said, “Honey.”
She didn’t move.
“Honey?” he called again.
She was still pouting.
“You still want to have a party?” he asked.
She flounced, shaking the bed, and Arthur Fry returned to his dream.
Chapter Five
Chief Bronson heard the whoo-ooo-ooo, whoo-ooo-000, whoo-ooo-oooing of the train and was glad that morning was on its way.
How many mornings, sleepless mornings, twisty-turny-tossy sleepless mornings had he heard it? Too many.
He reached for the blanket at the foot of the bed, pulled it up to his chin, and snuggled into warm drowsiness, thinking, this damned country, this funny so damned hot in the day and cool at night almost cold in the morning country.
Thinking, I’ll quit and get out of this damned place and raise chickens, maybe.
Thinking, should have quit long ago before they tried to rope me in on their lousy thieving.
“I’ll quit,” he mumbled. “I’ll resign before that damned Halliday fires me. Or frames me.”
Catherine reached over and patted his chest. “Go to sleep,” she said. “Stop worrying.”
“It’s that they want me to steal for them and I won’t do it,” he said. “It’s that I won’t clip the tramps and the pimps and the bookies and smalltime chiselers. Halliday and Byrd and the rest, the whole damned rest, want me to do their dirty work now.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Catherine said. “We’ll buy a farm and forget this town.”
“I’ve seen it coming a long time,” he said. “And now they’ve made it pretty plain.”
“I thought the sheriff did their dirty work.”
“Some of it. I don’t know. Maybe he keeps the graft, or most of it, and they want to muscle in. Or maybe he’s getting scared. Or maybe they want to use me and make me the goat in case they get caught.”
“We’ll buy a farm.”
“Chickens,” he said. “That’s what I want. Buy a little place and stock it with a couple thousand chickens, maybe more. Grind my own feed and raise fryers and sell eggs. Have a few cows, too. Sell butter and milk and chickens and eggs.”
She patted his shoulder. “That’s what we’ll do, then. Just make up your mind and stop worrying about this job. Chuck it! Throw it in their faces!”
“An honest cop hasn’t got a chance here,” he said. “They’re not used to honest cops! Don’t expect to have honest cops! Don’t believe in honest cops!”
“Stop worrying and get some sleep.”
He threw the blanket back and sat up. “I’ll make some java.”
Catherine thought his voice was tired, resigned. “No,” she said. “Not now. You need your rest. Lie down and try to go back to sleep.”
“What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why they want more money! Halliday and Byrd, those two, why they’re rich. Old Halliday owns half this town, I guess, and Byrd’s got nearly as much. Messner has bought himself a ranch, a big one, and on a sheriff’s salary. In a pig’s eye! And Arthur Fry, with his houses and apartment buildings— Think he bought them with the three hundred a month he gets as county attorney?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“They’ve got plenty,” he said. “Why do they want more? And if they want more, why do they have to rope me in?”
“They’ll not rope you in. Go back to sleep. Stop thinking about it.”
He stretched out, pulled the blanket up, and went to sleep....
The sun was streaming through the window, and Catherine was standing by the bed with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“Sit up and drink this,” she ordered.
She lit a cigarette and gave it to him. He sat on the edge of the bed and sipped the steaming coffee.
The phone rang.
Catherine answered it.
“Bronson residence,” she said.
He blew on the coffee, sipped it, and dragged at the cigarette.
“Yes,” Catherine said into the phone. “He’s awake. Just a moment.”
He put the cup on the night stand and stood up.
“Halliday,” Catherine said.
He took the receiver. “Hello.”
“Bronson?”
“Yes.”
“Halliday. Sorry to disturb you, but there’ll be a man in to see you today about a job. Name’s Ree. Willa Ree.”
“Don’t need a man.”
“Yeah, I know. This is different. Listen, he’s the man we’ve been looking for. To, uh, do the job we want done. You understand?”
“What job?”
“The one you don’t want to do! This Ree can handle it, and you can forget the whole thing. Put him on the force and he’ll take care of the whole deal. You can go right on like you’ve been doing, see, and he’ll do the, ah, the work we’ve been talking about.”
“You want him in uniform?”
“Put him in plain clothes. We’ve been needing a detective squad or whatever you call it. Give him two or three men.”
“Well, you’re the boss, Halliday. I don’t like it, but you’re the boss. Way I look at it, you can do it with or without me. It might as well be with me. For a while, anyway.”
“Glad to hear it, Bronson.”
“I’d like this understood though, Halliday. Whatever’s done is done without my knowledge. I don’t want any part of it and I don’t want to hear about any of it.”
“That’s fair enough. You put this Ree on and then forget the whole thing.”
“O.K.”
He finished his coffee and cigarette standing up, without enjoyment.
After he’d shaved and bathed and dressed, he went to the kitchen. Catherine was frying eggs and bacon. The clock above the icebox said nine o’clock.
Catherine smiled. “Sit down. Breakfast’ll be ready in a minute.”
“That was Halliday.”
“I know.”
“He told me to hire a guy named Ree. Wants him put in plain clothes.”
Catherine transferred the eggs from pan to platter. “I thought Wesley had been promised that job. He’ll scream to high heaven. This Ree must be—very competent.”
Bronson snorted. “He’s going to handle the graft! I’m to hire him and forget it.”
“Well, that’s a worry off your mind.”
“It’ll give us time to sell our house and find the place we want,” he said. “I can’t keep that job when I know there’s dirty work going on.”
She poured coffee and passed toast to him.
“No, Catherine,” he said, “this is the beginning of the end. I’m going to see a real-estate man today and put this house on the market. Halliday’s crowd will use me for a front for a while, and then when they get things going like they want—pfft—out I’ll go. This new man, Ree, will step up into my place.”
“Why don’t you quit now?”
“Maybe I should. But I might just as well draw a salary until we get the house sold. Another month’s pay, or two, will buy a lot of baby chicks.”