by James Jones
Then suddenly he recognized what it was that felt so familiar. Since he had committed the fifty-five hundred dollars to Frank, he was back in the position of having to count pennies, with that feeling that if you didn’t count right there was nobody to turn to. Nobody to make up the deficit.
In the car, ’Bama looked over at him and grinned and started talking. Probably to keep himself awake. ’Bama had been to the bookie’s every day they were there; that was where he had gone when he left Dave to shop for clothes at Strauss’s; “I should have stayed with you, I guess,” he said, “from the look of those clothes.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Dave demanded. “Nothin,” he said, looking at the Hollywood cut distastefully, “nothin at all, if I could just remember to wear my sunglasses when I’m looking at you.” But he had gone anyway. Making a total of five afternoons with the horses from which he had netted some four hundred dollars. He was counting the net, he told Dave, not the gross. The gross would have been something over twelve hundred dollars, but he only counted what he took home he said, not what he lost back. A wise policy, Dave told him grinning. ’Bama did not see the joke and went on talking. The point was: This was his hobby, not his profession. He didn’t expect to make money at it. His profession was gambling in Parkman. Cards and dice and the pool. That was where he made his money. He sounded almost defensive. They were riding out through Indianapolis west, on their way home, the streets virtually deserted now at five in the morning, almost no traffic present to heed the changing traffic lights. The girls were sound asleep in the back. ’Bama did not know exactly how he had gotten onto this particular bookmaker. He had been coming over here for some time and had heard a lot about it, before he ran into someone who could take him up there. Meanwhile he had patronized another place, a dinky little one-man joint, but this place here was the best and the ritziest bookmaker in the city. The investment office and loan business made a wonderful front for it. Actually, he was pretty sure, it was a syndicated place. The Syndicate? No, he didn’t think so. He didn’t mean that. Private owner. He grinned: Actually, he didn’t know a damn thing about the Syndicate. He had heard about it, sure, everybody had. But he’d never seen it. And didn’t especially want to. He didn’t even know if there even was such a damned thing. He grinned again. Then shrugged.
Dave looked over at the cheerful ’Bama and noticed for the first time that ’Bama was wearing a gun. Had been wearing it since they got in town, Dave realized belatedly, but he had been so matter of fact and unobtrusive and casually careful about keeping it out of sight that Dave realized now he’d been noticing it for several days without being aware of it. The Southerner’s coat was unbuttoned, and even in the dim light of the dash the black pistol butt was clearly discernible under his left arm.
’Bama noticed him looking and grinned. It was just for protection. He wore it whenever he came to the city. A lot of times, he carried so much cash that he had gotten a sheriff’s permit in Parkman to wear it. Here, if he’d take the wheel a minute, he’d get it off. Wouldn’t need it now. And the damned thing was uncomfortable. While Dave held the wheel, he shrugged out of his coat sleeves and got his arms out of the double loop of leather that went across his back and handed it to him to put in the dash compartment and put his coat back on. Matter of fact, the sheriff’s permit wasn’t really valid any more. He’d not got it renewed, but he still carried the old card.
Dave took it and held it. It was a little .32 six-shot Smith & Wesson with a W2 inch barrel, in a beautifully made little spring-clip holster made with the front side open so the gun could be swept out instead of having to be drawn. The leather showed good care.
“Only cost me fifty bucks,” ’Bama said. “Had the holster made up special at S D Myers in El Paso.”
Dave wrapped the straps around it and put it in the dash.
’Bama wriggled his shoulders against the seat back as if glad to be free of the weight. “What’s the matter?” he said grinning. “Were you afraid you’d fallen in with a member of the Syndicate?”
“No,” Dave said.
It was funny. Gun. It was another word that had developed its own meaning apart from the object it was used to designate. In the Army, you took a rifle or pistol for granted and cursed it because you had to clean it all the time and in combat you fired it when you got the chance and the object beyond the sights you took for granted too. Concealed weapon. That was the phrase. Carrying a concealed weapon.
“Did you ever draw it on anybody?” he said.
“No,” ’Bama said cheerfully, “never had to yet.”
It was in Terre Haute that they bought the car. They arrived there just as the businesses were opening. ’Bama drove to a place he knew on Ohio Street. They had had no sleep at all and had been drinking all night long. ’Bama tramped around the frozen lot with the dealer looking at the cars that had just been rolled out, kicking tires, disappearing under hoods, even getting down to look underneath some of them. Finally he selected a 1942 Plymouth of light green and said, “We’ll drive it around the block.” When they came back he said to Dave, “Take it. You got a good buy.” The dealer wanted $950. But by deriding the car itself, complaining about the tires, the motor, and even the windshield wipers, which he insisted would have to be replaced, ’Bama jewed him down to eight hundred, then refused to take it and got another fifty knocked off. The dealer flatly refused to go any lower. With energetic disgust, ’Bama told Dave he might as well take it, he had to have a car, and the guy had them by the throat. Dave paid him with $250 cash and a $500 check that, because the dealer did not know Dave, ’Bama had to countersign.
“You got a good buy,” ’Bama grinned at him after they got the keys. “It’s worth eight fifty easy. You’ll probly need a valve job after six or eight thousand miles, but otherwise it’s in real good shape.”
The two girls were still in the back of the Packard fast asleep. They decided to leave them there.
“Now don’t go to sleep and smash it up,” ’Bama admonished him. “If you get sleepy, open the window. You follow me in. If you have to stop for anything, flash your headlights at me.”
Dave did not get sleepy. It was the first time in his life he had ever owned his own car. The thoughtful ’Bama drove slow enough he did not have any trouble keeping up. He enjoyed the whole fifteen-mile trip immensely.
He had been gone five days, and during it had spent something over a thousand dollars. Five hundred of it had come out of his fifty-five-hundred-dollar capital. But Frank could either take or leave it. He had enough good clothes to last him a long time, some luggage, and a pretty good car. And he felt he had made perhaps the best friend he had ever made in his life, although he did not know what he had done to deserve it, or what ’Bama’s motive had been.
Back in Parkman, whose winter business day was already well under way, ’Bama pulled up in the street in front of the hotel and waited for him. When Dave pulled up along side, he rolled down his window and stuck his head out.
“I’ll take these two on home,” he called. “Don’t worry about Mildred Pierce losin her job.” (It had become a private joke to them to always call her by her full name). “She won’t. They need people too bad at the brassiere factory. I’ll call you in a couple days.” He pulled his head in, the purple circled eyes looking like two blue-covered wartime flashlights, then stuck it back out. “Or else you can look me up at the Ath Club poolroom.”
The heavy Packard slid away and took the hotel corner expertly, still accelerating.
Dave parked his Plymouth in front of the hotel and made his way upstairs with his new luggage, his heart thumping from lack of rest. But before he undressed, he called the house and learned from Agnes that he needn’t have worried about Frank while he was gone, Frank was at a very important jewelers’ show in Chicago, he would be back today or tomorrow at the latest. Dave hung up; why the hell did he feel so relieved?
That Rosalie. All the time he’d spent with her, all the times he’d had her, and n
ot a bit of it had helped him a damned bit.
Loneliness like another living presence inside his skin, he got undressed and lay down to sleep.
Chapter 17
FRANK HAD ALREADY KNOWN Dave was out of town when Geneve Lowe called him at the store to tell him she was going to Chicago. So he did not have to worry about that conflicting.
But there were a couple of things he did have to worry about. One was getting the contract drawn for the taxi service, which was going to be a considerable problem on account of Judge Deacon; and it ought to be ready for Dave to sign when he got back. The other worry was the fact that Geneve hadn’t given him any advance notice this time.
Geneve, as usual, was leaving just before lunch and Dotty Callter was driving her to Terre Haute to catch the three o’clock train. Since it was in the neighborhood of two hundred miles to Chicago, she didn’t get in until around seven. Their usual procedure was for him to drive up some time during the day and meet her, either at the station or in the bar of the hotel. He and Geneve always stayed at the same hotel on Michigan Boulevard because no one from Parkman ever seemed to go there, they always stayed at the Palmer House or the Drake. But usually, she let him know a couple of days ahead of time.
“That’s pretty short notice,” he said, peering at the office door. Edith Barclay had found something to do outside—she always did when a certain unnamed party called for him—he was sure she recognized the voice because Geneve called for Al, too, a lot of times. She was a good girl.
“I know, darling,” the cool voice said. “But I didn’t find out about it till last night. And I didn’t want to call you at home.”
“Well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it today or not,” Frank said, a little testily.
“Ahh, poor darling,” the cool voice said, “I know. But if you can’t, you can make it tomorrow, can’t you?”
“Oh, I’ll make it today,” he said, mollified. “Somehow. You go ahead and register. Because I may be late. But don’t worry, I’ll make it,” he said, putting power into his voice.
“I knew you would,” she said. “See you tonight.” She hung up.
Frank hung up, too, grinning. She knew how to handle him. Sometimes he almost felt she did things like this on purpose, just to see how far she could push him and still make him comply. But he liked that. She couldn’t do it on anything important, when he didn’t want her to. It even made him hot for her, sometimes. Frank could feel his breath coming slow and deep into his chest. Thin, yes; she was; but she had wide hips and plenty breasts—when you got those tight little brassieres off her that she wore to make them look tiny. And there were so many things they did together, too.
It was funny he thought suddenly, I was a senior in high school when she was born. Just imagine that.
His lips felt heavy and full of blood, and aware of his lungs moving and the muscles of his body, Frank suddenly felt like getting up on top his desk and beating his swelling chest with his fist and shouting at the top of his lungs I’m a MAN!
Half the fun was in the secretiveness, he thought. The sneaking off to someplace like Chicago. The doing of something wrong—and putting it over. And yet at the same time, it hurt his pride and made him angry that he had to do it that way. He had had other women, plenty of them. Mostly waitresses, and office clerks, and factory workers, from Terre Haute and Indianapolis. He had even had a couple of Country Club affairs; but these were always so difficult to find safe trysting places for that they didn’t last long. But in Geneve, he had found the kind of mistress that he really wanted. She was sophisticated, she was good looking, she was young. And she wouldn’t clutch at you. That was the kind of mistress he had wanted all along. That was the kind of mistress a man in his position ought to have. That was the kind of mistress Wernz and Crowder and Paul Fredric, Wernz’s son-in-law, and the rest had. Judge Deacon had been sleeping with that secretary of his for twenty years, and he had done a lot for her husband. Now that he had his, he could do the same. For Al. Everybody in town envied him, he thought grinning. He thought of her again, seeing her in that same mental picture he had of her, which was his private symbol for her and which he always saw in his mind whenever he thought of her: thin, narrow-shouldered, with those tiny arms no bigger than his wrists, and that wide pelvis walking across a hotel room toward him. Everybody said she looked like a Vogue magazine model. Well, he had better cut this and get moving, on those things he had to do, he thought. If he got out of town by four o’clock, he could be in Chicago before eight tonight.
He swung the swivel chair away from the telephone, and as he did Edith Barclay came back inside. He looked away from her so that she could not see the redness in his eyes, which felt full of blood.
The first thing he wanted to do was to get that contract fixed up for Dave to sign, but he didn’t know how to go about it yet. Edith had sat down and gone studiously back to work, blank-faced. He looked at the back of her head. She was really quite some girl. If it wasn’t for the absolutely ironbound rule he had made himself about female help, when he began to get into the upper brackets—it had been Edith who had told him this morning about Dave going to Indianapolis last night. Which, if he hadn’t known, would have changed everything. When Geneve called. He wouldn’t even have been able to go. . . .
She had been sitting at her desk working—she always got there first, of course—when he came in. He was still pretty badly hung over from all that drinking last night. God, why did a man do it. So he was a bit later than usual. And he felt lousy. He had stopped at the Rexall for a Bromo, but it hadn’t had time to take effect yet, and his stomach was still fluttering in protest at all the alcohol that had been poured into it last night without its consent. After the hellos, and her customary sympathetic remark about him looking like he felt rotten that she made every time he came in hungover, Edith had gone back to work for several minutes, and then had said suddenly in a half-smothered casual voice: “I met your brother last night.”
“Who?” Frank said. “Dave? Where?”
“At Smitty’s,” she said, in that same strange voice. “He was there with that gambler ’Bama and Dewey Cole.”
“He didn’t get in any trouble?” Frank said.
“Oh no, nothing like that.”
“He didn’t insult you or somethin’?”
“Oh no. He just came over to the booth and introduced himself to me.” She paused. “I guess some of them had told him I worked for you.”
“Then he was all right, then?” Frank said, wanting to feel relieved. “I mean, he didn’t do something?”
“Oh, he’d been drinking a good bit,” Edith said. “And you know that bunch he was with, always up to something or other. But he was perfectly all right. But he said he’d been out to your house, and said something about seeing you tomorrow. But then he and that ’Bama left with two of that bunch of girls from the brassiere factory and were going to Indianapolis.”
“In that snow!” Frank said.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that!” Edith frowned. She shook her head. “I understand from Harold that ’Bama is a really excellent driver. The snow wasn’t bad, out on the highway.”
“Well, what did you mean?” Frank asked.
“Well, they didn’t look like they’d be back today,” Edith said. “That was all. And I thought since he’d said he expected to see you, if you were expecting to, you’d better not look for him.”
For the first time, she turned around and looked him in the eyes, almost belligerently.
Frank merely sat and looked at her in puzzlement.
The truth was, she didn’t know herself why she had told him, it had just popped out of her. And it wasn’t important. It was not her custom to talk to the boss about unimportant things. She turned back to her work, almost angrily, in what she recognized was more of a face-saving gesture than anything else. Why had she told him? Had she wanted to help him? It was probably all due to the fact that she had recognized in Dave that peculiar something that was so much l
ike Frank—that awkward little-boy-ness—though, of course, in the boss it was so entirely different. He looked terrible today. He shouldn’t try to drink with Dave. And that wife of his, she thought angrily. Agnes was going to have to do something to help him out, some way. Instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself all the time. Between the two of them—her and Geneve Lowe—they were ruining him. No wonder he drank so much. Couldn’t they see how unhappy he was? She should never have mentioned Dave to him.
“Look!” Frank said, “You’re not gettin interested in that bum, are you!”
“In that?” Edith exclaimed. “Good God, no! That’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about!”
“Well, you’d better not,” Frank said. “You’re just a bush leaguer, compared to that guy. He’s a pro.”
“If he’s a pro,” Edith said, trying hard to keep at least some of the contempt out of her voice, “he certainly doesn’t handle women like he’s one.”
“Did he try to proposition you?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
“Well you just keep away from him,” Frank said.
“Don’t worry about that, Boss,” Edith said. “But whatever gave you the idea I’d even be interested in him?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said, still looking angry. “I don’t know what. You sounded awful funny. I’m goin back down to the Rexall for another Bromo,” he said, still staring bleakly at the back of her head. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
It had upset him, more than he liked to admit. He meant to speak to Dave about it. Christ, if he couldn’t keep his own office girl safe from him . . .
. . . But then after he got back, Geneve had called and he had realized how important it was that she’d given him the information.
“I’m goin to have to go out of town for a few days, Edith,” he said from behind his desk. “While you were out front, right after that other call, Jeff Miller of Miller’s Jewelry in Terre Haute called me. Seems the Indiana Jewelers is havin some kind of a display-show shindig in Indianapolis, and he wants me to help represent the Wabash Valley at it.”