by Peter Rabe
Rand didn’t answer. I hoped the two would have a quarrel and forget about me because I couldn’t think straight with Rand sitting in back of me and most likely watching the way I breathed.
Because maybe that cop in civilian clothes wasn’t there to check on the liquor laws. Maybe he had come out because Eddy had called him. Eddy might have remembered me —
“Listen,” said Tooley. “Let’s take a look at that school, huh, Rand? We’re out here anyways, and the way Gallivan talked about that school yesterday …”
“All right. Go ahead.”
So appearances weren’t gone altogether and Tooley wasn’t going to let a good thing go by just because Rand had been sent down with some harebrained thing about his dead brother and a dumb con like me. He was a business man, after all, wanting to broaden his market.
He turned into the new part of the development and where the street widened we could see the school.
“Nice and modern,” said Tooley.
Rand wasn’t much interested because he said it was eight-thirty and counting students going in at this hour wouldn’t give a good average anyway.
“They start at nine, wintertime,” said Tooley.
He parked the car so that the low, angular building lay to one side. The school had big windows and there were paper cut-outs taped to the glass. Tree leaves, stars, candles, all different colors. Then some students crossed the street and went into the building.
“Lookit them pretty ski pants,” said Tooley. “You ever see such colors?”
“They’re too young,” said Rand.
“Yeah.”
More came. Their feet made a dry sound in the snow, and they all had red cheeks. The sun was very bright and the air like glass.
“Don’t bother counting,” said Rand.
“I never touch nothing less than fourteen,” said Tooley. “Don’t work.”
“This is the grade school,” said Rand.
“Big like that? Let’s sit a while and maybe something older comes by. Then we count.”
“There’s a teacher,” said Rand.
“No market.”
We sat and watched the children.
In a while Tooley rolled down his window and when the next bunch of kids came by he called to them and one little girl came up to the car.
“Where’s the older kids, honey?” Tooley asked her.
“We’re the older ones. The kindergarten is …”
“No, no, no, honey. You ain’t old enough. I mean the real old ones.”
“You mean the high school?” Every time she talked her breath came out white and then disappeared. She had a sweet face with big eyes. Tooley would not look at her with any interest for another eight years, maybe, or at best six.
“Yeah. I mean the high school.”
“You drive around that way and they are sort of in back of us.”
“Thank you, honey.”
He reached into his pocket but by the time he had come up with the quarter the girl had turned and was going across the street.
“What the hell,” said Tooley. “No use spoiling ‘em,” and put the quarter back in his pocket.
I said, “Besides, she won’t save it ‘til she’s fourteen, anyway,” and he laughed about it as if I had made a joke.
Then he drove away slowly, because there were so many children crossing the street.
CHAPTER 21
We could see the high school right after the turn, and that looked much better to Tooley. He kept saying, yessir, yessir, all research and action now and to hell with Rand and that fluky business. There were high school students on foot and by car, and most of them the right age.
“I go a lot by the hairdos,” said Tooley. “You ever notice them funny hairdos on some of the boys?”
“Don’t think like the movies,” said Rand from the back seat. “Since when do they need a ducktail to get themselves hooked?”
Tooley stopped the car and would have liked to argue the point but he wanted to count sheep. He had two mechanical counters and gave me one of them. I would count sheep at the near door and he would count sheep going in by the far door.
“Try to leave out the one’s under fourteen, fifteen, Gallivan. There’s no point in …”
“I know. You explained that.”
Rand sat in back and I could feel his impatience. He said that all this was nonsense, and, for instance, the kids that came with cars went in through a back door and we couldn’t count them from here. If this hadn’t been so macabre, sitting quietly in the car, counting Tooley’s junkies who didn’t know it yet, I would have felt the same way as Rand. The sun was sharp on the snow and after a while I hardly looked any more. I could think of no way out of this sick farce. I could think of no way to get to the bar again, as long as Rand was sitting behind me.
A car tried to stop next to us, didn’t make it because of the snow, and with wheels spinning came sliding back. The one who was driving was the same man who had parked in front of the house when I had come out during the night. Rand had his window down already and was waiting. When the driver had his down he first complained about how long it had taken him to find us in the neighborhood.
“Get to it,” said Rand.
“You was supposed to call back. The sanatorium.”
“Mishkin again?”
“No. Hell, no. The other one. The wheel.”
I didn’t know who the wheel was but I knew now that Mishkin, like Rand, was just one of the hands. And Rand didn’t sound irritable any more, or unfriendly. He seemed a little bit worried.
“He say what he wanted?”
“Yeah. You. And why you didn’t call back.”
Rand thought for a moment. Then he said, “Call him back for me, will you? Tell him I got nothing yet but maybe …”
“Nix, Rand. Nix. You call him back. He wants you.”
Rand got out of the car and just turned around once.
“You stay here, you and Gallivan,” he said to Tooley. “Don’t make a move ‘til I …”
“They’ll all be inside that school,” Tooley said. “Another fifteen minutes or less and there won’t be no point …”
“You wait here,” said Rand. “That’s all I’m telling you.”
He got into the other car and drove off, Tooley made a sound like a Bronx cheer and forgot to count.
“He’s gonna get the shaft so he takes it out on me. You notice that, Gallivan?”
“I did, Tooley. And I don’t think you should take it.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so either.” He counted a while, because there was a late bunch going up to the door, and then he said, “To hell with him,” but nothing else came after that.
“We ought to drive around some more,” I told Tooley. “We ought to give the whole neighborhood a good once-over, Tooley, and get an idea of the income group. Like the shopping center can give an idea, the type houses in this part of the section, the kind of people that sit in the restaurants, bars, that kind of thing.”
“Hell, yes,” he said. “We’ll do that Yessir, Gallivan, you got a business head on your shoulders. How many you got counted off on your clicker?”
I looked and said eighty-six.
“I got hundred and sixty. What’s hundred and sixty plus eighty-six? I can’t figure so good without …”
“Two-forty-six. But we ought to …”
“Just a minute, just a minute. Now let’s say we make that round with the ones we didn’t catch and say three hundred. More maybe, because of the ones home with a cold. We start out with reefers, let’s say three to four hundred a week, after one or two months of good work — we got this down to a science, Gallivan, let me tell you — and a little junk here and there. Once in with the reefers there’s no problem finding the stickers among them. I’d say, after half a year of working it easy …”
“Listen, Tooley. You can figure all that out at home, nice and comfortable. We …”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Just a few decks to start, tw
o months from now. Just a few at a buck for a teaser, and after three to six months, let me figure this, after three to six months we should have, at four bucks, a fin maybe, we should have …”
“You can’t figure it in your head, Tooley. You need paper and pencil. Come on. Let’s go.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” He put the counter into his pocket and started the car. “Remember that number to start with, Gallivan. Was that three hundred round?”
“Yeah. Three hundred round. Drive, Tooley.”
He drove. He kept mumbling and muttering about all his new, future customers, about how long it would take to pull in an extra thousand a week with no extra overhead, happy thoughts by the look on his face, and we kept driving around through the neighborhood. I directed him and he just went along, and in a while I could see the bar again, at the end of the street.
“We’ll stop there,” I said. “Good place to get an idea of the type of customer around here.”
“Huh?”
“The bar, Tooley. You can borrow a napkin and a pencil in there and do your figuring. I’ll have a conversation with the bartender there.”
“Wait a minute. Didn’t you say they might know you in there?”
“You go first. You tell me if there’s a big, blond man, getting bald, and if not I can come in safely enough. Besides, it’s been over seven years.”
He stopped the car and said yessir, yessir, a few times, liking the way the day’s work was going. I don’t think he gave a damn about Rand’s problem. That would help.
I let him go ahead and he looked into the bar, through the window He didn’t call me when he was through but came back.
“Only thing is,” he said, “I don’t like the customer in there. I’m not sure, but he looks cop.”
“Crap,” I said, “not twice in a day.”
“Maybe just liquor trouble.”
I didn’t know what to do. Maybe just Gallivan trouble?
“Tooley,” I said, “go on in and listen.”
And if he heard them mention my name, at least I wouldn’t have walked in on it. I could still explain it to Tooley then, that naturally they’d ask around in my old neighborhood, seeing I had just busted jail, that a criminal always wants to go back to the place where he’s been most happy, and so forth.
He went across the street He hesitated once when a car passed on the highway and when it let out a screech with the brakes. But it wasn’t a cop car. It was two-tone. I got out and stood by the hood, watching Tooley. He went across the street and then he looked over again, to the highway.
The car came fast, and I had to think of the high school kids we had been counting, because of the hopped-up driving the car was doing. It started to slither, trying to brake, and kept bumping the curb. Rand was out of the car before it had stopped.
If he said, “I thought I told you to stay by that school — ”
He said nothing. He was white in the face and when he was close enough he swung back-handed and the knuckles slammed into the side of my nose.
I fell because of the slick snow. I got my feet under me and then I was going to jump Rand and tear off his head. I’d had it. I didn’t care what it meant for the moment, I just wanted to beat the insides out of Rand.
I saw him step back. Not that it would help him. He even had his hands in his pockets, as always, and I was up now and going at him.
“Get in the car,” he said.
For that I’d hit him a little bit longer. I pushed away from the fender, for leverage.
“Get in the car, you sonofabitch. You’ve been spotted!”
That stopped me.
CHAPTER 22
I could sit in the back again, and Rand, in front, didn’t even bother to look back. He told Tooley to drive like he was normal and to stay away from the town.
“To the sanatorium,” he said.
“You mean just drive you there, don’t you?” Tooley was back to normal. He was afraid of Rand or whomever Rand worked for.
“Just drive there,” said Rand. “The conference is for Gallivan.”
“Mishkin?” I asked him.
“No. Not Mishkin.”
I didn’t think he was in the mood to explain any more. He was tense and jumpy, and I got a picture of Rand which hadn’t showed before, behind his blandness. I decided that Rand could get very ugly.
We drove awhile without talking and it was worse now than before, the not knowing, the little pawn in the big game, but now with a crisis.
And what did I have? I didn’t know until I knew what they had. Except that I knew where the dead Tooley used to live. They didn’t have that, yet.
“Who spotted him?” Tooley asked.
“Some jerk in town. I don’t know the details.”
“Was that what the phone call was all about?”
“Yuh.”
“They knew at the sanatorium?”
“If nothing else works around here,” said Rand, “at least the pipeline still works. Some citizen called into central and he used to know Gallivan. And he thinks he’s seen Gallivan.” He didn’t turn around, but he said, “You listening, Gallivan?”
“Thank you for saving me at the last minute,” I said. “With that nose breaker.”
“Don’t make jokes, Gallivan. There’s no more jokes, from now on.”
“I can’t figure,” said Tooley, “when somebody saw him.”
“Funny, isn’t it?” said Rand. I didn’t see his face when he said it, but he sounded mean as hell.
“So whoever saw him,” said Tooley, “musta seen you at the same time. Or me even!”
“I’m not worried about you, Tooley,” said Rand. “You’re getting to be dirt around here.”
“And you? They spot you means nothing maybe?”
“Yeah. Nothing. I’m not known around here,” Rand told him. “Drive slower.”
“I’m driving …”
“Today,” said Rand, “you drive twenty-five when it says twenty-five. Or minus three if it says minus three. All right, Tooley?”
“All right, all right — ”
With caution and detours we got to the park and the big, white house by late afternoon. It was getting dark, the half light washing out everything which wasn’t either white or black. The trees were black, the house like a large mausoleum.
We pulled up to the side where the big elevator let out There were no windows on that side of the house. The patients, if they were the kind who looked out of the window, would have no idea what came and went on this side of the house. And like me, they would have no idea what went on at the top floor of their hospital.
This time there was one of those carts in the elevator, one to wheel bodies. It rolled a little when the elevator started up. Rand stopped it with one hand and kept looking up at the ceiling.
I wanted to nod at the cart and say, “Someone’s expected?” and then Rand would say, “Yes. You.” Silly jokes like that kept going through my head.
Upstairs was nobody, like always, except this time it felt worse. We went to the place where the corridors came together and where the chairs stood and the plant.
“Wait here,” said Rand.
I sat down and kept my coat on. To take off the coat would have interrupted the waiting. I was too anxious to do anything but what I was told. Later, I knew, something would happen, something would come, and I would need all the energy I had. Don’t waste it now, don’t waste energy taking off coats. Sit still, save it.
Rand went through one of the doors, into the room where I had been with Mishkin. Rand came back out after a while and sat down, too.
“We just wait,” he said, before I had opened my mouth. Rand took his overcoat off and smoked. He crossed his legs one way and then the other. I sat inside my overcoat like in a cocoon. In a while Rand got up again.
“You stay here,” he said. “Don’t go away again, huh?” Then he left.
It got darker and nobody turned on any lights. I saw one empty chair, closed doors, the plant I particu
larly disliked the plant Once I heard a door, feet, a door. I got up to look down the corridor. There was no one around.
I walked a little. Back to the elevator, and there was a man this time, smoking by the window. He looked at me ‘til I left again. I went the other way, sweating now, and there was a staircase I had never seen before, a swinging door in the corridor and a staircase behind that, and a man sitting on the first step. I didn’t go through the door and the man on the step didn’t see me. Not that it made any difference.
I walked back and I took my overcoat off. I didn’t do it because I was hot but because suddenly I couldn’t stand the weight. Then I saw Jessie.
It was dark in the corridor but I saw the girl. Then she disappeared through a door.
The hall where the plant stood was empty. I left my overcoat on the chair — to let Rand know that I was still here — and then I went back to the door. It didn’t occur to me to knock.
Because it was dark in the room I could only make out her shape, bent, near a chair, with the window behind her. She had one leg on the chair and that, too, was ordinary enough, this being her room, and perhaps she was straightening a stocking. But her movement was pure fright.
She whirled around. There was a sound from her throat, and then she stood very still against the light from the window.
“You — ” she said.
“Jessie?”
“Get out!”
It was like a violent hiss, and if I could have seen her face I would have known if it was anger, fright, what —
“Jessie,” I said and walked to her, “I just wanted — ”
I was close enough then to see her face — a mask of cold rage. Then I made the wrong move. I reached for her arms, and she slapped my hand out of the way. When she made that violent movement she dropped it.
I knew what it was without being able to see. When she bent down for it I yanked her back. There was a night table next to the window and I reached for the lamp. I got it lit while she clawed at my face. When the light snapped on we both drew back from each other and looked down at the floor, at the same thing.
It wasn’t a filthy eyedropper, with needle taped to the end, but a good, ten cc syringe and the needle had probably been sterile before she had dropped it to the floor.