by John Farris
“Make it two,” I said.
“Ah,” he grunted. It had satisfied him to know what I had in mind. Half of him dragged the other half back to the bar.
She walked over to me with too much hip swing. She wore a cheap flower-print cotton dress that ended a couple of inches below her knees. She sat down next to me, smiled a little. She had heavy lips and a chin that sagged. Flesh shook on the bones of her upper arms when she moved them.
I smiled back. “Hot day,” I said.
“Yeah.” She smoothed hair on top of her head with chubby fingers. The hair looked as if it had been dyed with coffee. “That’s why I like to sit in here on days like this. Too hot to go out.” Her eyes were busy, deciding how much I was worth.
“I bought you a drink,” I said, trying to seem pleasantly nervous. “I thought you might like one.”
“Well, thanks.” We were good buddies. She grabbed hers off the tray while the bartender was still approaching the table. I took the other glass and paid him. I didn’t touch mine. She drank hers with relish, the throat muscles pulling greedily.
“Say,” she said, swinging the glass down. “That’s good. Good as gold.” She licked her lips.
I put my own down, trying to look as if I had enjoyed it. “Yeah,” I said solemnly. “It’s good to taste liquor again.”
Her eyes went appraisingly over my suit. She reached out and handled the sleeve. “That’s a pretty good suit,” she said wittily.
I kept looking at her as if she were the closest thing to an angel I had seen yet. I hoped my look was full of lust. “They gave it to me when I got out,” I said.
She nodded. “Thought I recognized the cut of it. Prison goods.” She crossed her legs, because it was about that time in the script — the script she had written for herself a long time ago. Her hips pushed tightly against the thin dress. I looked where I was supposed to look.
“How long were you in?” she said.
“Five years.”
“That’s too bad,” she said sympathetically. “Five years in the can ain’t no fun. No liquor. No women.” She gave me a long look. “Say,” she said, “I got half a bottle in my room. I mean, it’s goin’ to waste, I don’t like to drink alone. You and me could have a pull at it. I mean, since you just got out and all—”
“I’d like that,” I said. “Where’s your room?”
She nodded. “Up the stairs back there. It’s not a very fancy place. Just a place to lay my head.” She giggled. We got up together. She took my hand and led me past the bartender. He didn’t look at us.
Her hand felt damp and slightly greasy. She held tightly to me, almost pulling me up the narrow stairway. I stopped when we went through the door into her room. A man was sitting at a table in the center of the floor, his face on the yellowing cloth. He was snoring his head off. There was a jug of cheap wine near him. I could smell it throughout the room.
“Don’t mind him,” she said. “He’ll sleep for hours.” She released my hand, went to the bed, lifted a thin, stained mattress, pulled a flat bottle of whisky from under it.
“Here we are, honey,” she said gaily, holding the bottle high. She pitched it at me. “Catch. Glasses over there on the dresser.”
I turned away and set the bottle on the dresser. The hot room smelled vaguely like a whore-house scrub room. There was a toilet in one corner that bubbled constantly.
I heard her unzipping the dress and turned around. She wiggled out of it, kicked it away with a heavy flat foot. She wore no underwear. Her breasts sagged over her belly. The nipples pointed almost straight down.
“After you’ve had some of that you can have some of this,” she said, pointing. “But only the booze is free, baby.”
I took out my wallet, peeled off a five-dollar bill. I put the wallet back. Her eyes were bright. “We could have a real party,” she said, the words oozing out. “Maybe some harder stuff than whisky. Lots harder.”
“What name you go by?”
“Gretchen. Just call me Gretchen, darlin’. Let’s have that drink.”
“No, thanks. The five only buys one thing.”
She stopped advancing toward me. “What’s that, darlin’? I don’t go in for none of these tricks—”
“I just want to know where Rose is. That’s what I get for the five.”
She frowned. “Rose?”
“She used to work here. About five years ago. For all I know she’s still here.”
I had her puzzled. “She did work here. She ain’t here now. She—”
I found myself listening with part of my mind for a sound that wasn’t there any more. I turned toward the table as the man who had been sitting there leaped at me. Surprise was all he had. When I turned I took that away from him and all that was left was a big double-edged knife and no technique. He slashed at me with the blade from a place behind his ear. I got an arm up to block his try, then hammered him in the gut. He hit the floor on his back. I stepped on his wrist with one foot, kicked the knife out of his hand with the other. I kept my foot on the wrist and looked at him while he went about learning how to breathe again. He was dark and had a thick mustache.
“Who are you?” the naked woman said shrilly. “What d’you want?”
I told her to shut up. I hauled the guy off his back and hit him in the mouth. He stumbled back against the table, then dived for his knife. I was already there. I picked it up. The blade was about a mile long, and the handle was wrapped with tape. There was dried blood on the tape. The blade looked as if it had been sharpened many times, done much work.
I picked him up again and jammed him against the wall and put the edge of the blade under his chin. He sweated wine from every pore. He chewed me out in thick jumbled Spanish.
“What was this supposed to be?” I said. “Your afternoon workout?”
“Ain’t no goddam cop gonna come around here actin’ wise,” he said.
“What do you care how she earns her money? What are you to her, anyway?”
“Anything I want to be, buster,” he said.
I glanced back over my shoulder. The woman was wearily putting on her dress again. This whole bit didn’t interest her.
“Suppose you tell me where I can find Rose?”
“Suppose you — ” he said.
“You gonna cut his throat or not?” the woman said in a hard voice.
“I’m working up to it,” I said.
“You won’t get nothin’ from him,” she said with a little rattling laugh. “He ain’t afraid of nothin’. Cut his throat and he’ll kick your ass off while he’s bleeding to death.”
“Isn’t that lovely?” I said. She was probably right.
“I don’t want you to have to maul him,” she said. “Rose lives with a guy now.”
“Where?”
“Two months ago it was a walkup over on Chambliss. Twenty-five-ten Chambliss. Today it might be somewhere else.”
I pounded the guy’s head against the wall and let him go. He staggered to the table and leaned hard on it. There was blood on his lips.
I gave the woman the five dollars. She took it and held it while she zipped the dress. The guy straightened up, looked at me, looked at the five dollars. He walked over to her, stumbling slightly. He took the five dollars and belted her across the face. They glared at each other.
“Nex’ time you don’t go shooting your mouth off,” he said, breathing hard. She didn’t say anything. Her cheeks had flushed red.
“I’ll leave your knife downstairs with the bartender,” I said. “Maybe you better go down to the juvenile hall and get some kid to show you how to use it before you wave it around again.”
I went downstairs and handed the knife to the bartender. He looked it over and looked at me. I walked on out. I was happy to be leaving.
The address on Chambliss turned out to be an old brick apartment building in a mixed neighborhood just a couple of blocks from a Negro slum. The only whites in the neighborhood were those who couldn’t afford to move somew
here else, and the liquor-store owners.
On the front porch an aging woman with skin that looked as if it were stuck to her face with rubber cement told me that a woman named Rose lived on the third floor. She told me to use the back stairs.
I walked through the narrow concrete-paved areaway between two buildings. Small children were playing on the entire length of it, and in the barren back yard. They climbed on the shed roof and crawled behind the row of garbage cans and waded in the small pools of muddy water. Older children sat on the steps and looked at me with dull, arrogant eyes as I brushed by them.
It was a long climb to the third floor. I stopped a couple of times on the landings, then brushed by lines hung with sodden wash and climbed on until I came to the right door.
I could see the woman through an open kitchen window. She was washing dishes in a pan on the sink and having a hard time of it. Her lips were pursed in concentration. She turned at the sound of my fist against the door, dried her hand on an apron and came to the door.
She had waxy yellow hair and tight good skin that wouldn’t wrinkle no matter what her age. She might have been forty, but I couldn’t be sure. Her hair was combed straight back and tied with a piece of faded purple ribbon.
“Rose?” I said.
“Yes?” She bent quickly to push a puppy back into the kitchen, with her one hand. When I knew her she had both arms. Now the left one was cut off below the shoulder, and the short sleeve of the dress she wore was tied down over the stump.
“My name’s Pete Mallory. I used to know you about six years ago, when you were at The Rendezvous.”
Mention of The Rendezvous caused her to frown. She tugged a little at the apron with her hand. “I don’t believe I remember you. At The Rendezvous — ” She shrugged. Her mouth had a slightly bitter twist to it.
“I know,” I said. The puppy was trying to squirm outside again and this time she held him back with a small foot. “You see, I’m looking for a man. I thought if I could find the Preacher or someone like that, he could help me.” The Preacher was sort of a code name for a man who had sold information about anything and everything.
She shook her head. “The Preacher’s dead. He died about five years ago.”
“Oh. I guess that had to happen,” I said.
“He wasn’t killed. He had a heart attack. I’m afraid I can’t help you. I left The Rendezvous months ago.” She looked without meaning to at the tied-off sleeve.
“I thought maybe you knew someone like The Preacher who could tell me what I need to know.”
“No. No.” She shook her head emphatically. But she kept looking at me as if her memory were beginning to thaw a little. “I don’t know any man like that any more. I haven’t known any since I left The Rendezvous.”
She tried to close the door. But I was leaning against the jamb and she couldn’t push it past me. “Are you sure you don’t remember me?” I said.
Little paths of perspiration covered her face. “No,” she breathed. “No, I don’t. Please go away.”
“I saved your life once,” I said quietly. “I kept a drunk from tearing your throat out with a broken bottle. You probably don’t remember, because you were drunk, too. But I had to kick in a door to get at him. I’ve got a little scar from that on my hand, where a splinter of wood gouged me.” I looked at the hand. “You can’t see it so good any more,” I added.
Her eyes were large and she looked a little frightened. “I don’t believe you. Get out of the door and go away and leave me be.”
“You’ve got a scar, too, where the bottle raked you as he fell. There should be a scar, anyway, right near your hip. It was a deep cut.”
She tottered back a couple of steps, her eyes on my face. “I... I have that scar,” she said.
I pushed the door open and came inside. I stopped and scooped up the puppy. He squirmed in my hands and chewed at the cuff of my coat.
“Now I need help, Rose,” I said.
“Don’t expect me to be able to help you,” she said. She leaned against a table covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth. “I don’t know anything now. Once I gave information.” She put the hand to her face. There was a slight look of shock in her eyes. “And once I had none to give.” Her eyes ranged from me to the floor and then to the sink, like wild things. “That time I had none to give, they thought I was lying. They were big men. Foreign. They didn’t care that I was a woman. They had my arm.” Her eyes went to the sleeve and were full of horror that hadn’t diminished with the passing of time. “They twisted it. And... twisted it—”
“That’s enough,” I said.
Her lips were apart. They were dry lips, with no touch of red. “Now you want information and I don’t have any to give. I don’t know anything.”
I put the puppy down before he could ruin my sleeve. “I’ll go,” I said. “I’m sorry for — bothering you.”
“Wait.” She straightened up from the table, swallowed hard. “It was a worthless life,” she said. “But you saved it. You must have, or you wouldn’t know about the scar. Now I’ve got a good man. A good man to make something of the worthless life.”
She walked to the sink with quick steps, filled a glass with water. “This man you want — what is he?”
“A hired killer, I think.”
She nodded, once. “Then you speak to Dave. Dave might be able to help you.”
“Who is Dave?”
She turned from the sink after drinking. Her eyes were full of fierce hate and woman’s tenderness and you could see them both at the same time. “He was a detective with the police. He was a good detective, until they took his badge. He’s in the bedroom. Asleep. I’ll go talk to him. You sit down, please. Would you like some cookies?”
“No, thank you. I’ll just wait.”
I watched her leave the kitchen. Her figure was good, even after years of abuse at The Rendezvous and other such places. She talked with a certain dignity that hinted at the rare fine qualities of this former gutter orphan.
I gave the pup a hard time with my foot, rolling him over on the floor when he tried to chew my toe off. He growled and attacked, swinging furry stiff paws at the shoe. He had a great time.
Finally she came back. “Dave said he’ll see you,” she said, and told me how to find him. She remained in the kitchen.
The man called Dave sat on the edge of a big double bed in the bedroom. He rubbed at crisp black hair that showed spikes of white. There were smudges under his eyes and his skin was pale, as if he had spent a lot of time indoors. He wore shorts and an undershirt that was soaked with perspiration. He wasn’t more than five feet seven, but he must have weighed close to 175 pounds. He had probably been a rough cop. Vice-squad material.
“Come on in,” he growled, holding his head. A gun and holster hung on a high-backed rocking chair near the bed. There was a bottle of whisky on a solid little table within reaching distance.
“Rose said I got to help you, if I can,” he said, not happy about the idea. He didn’t look at me for more than two seconds. The eyes were sharp and petulant. He grabbed the bottle and glass and poured himself one.
“Sit down. Drink?”
“No, thanks.” I sat on the edge of the rocker. There was a badge pinned to the worn leather of the holster. He had been a sergeant.
“I thought they took that away from you,” I said, tactfully.
His head jerked up. He made a harsh sound in his throat. “They couldn’t find it to take away. It was unaccountably lost. Rose tell you I got busted?”
“Yes. She didn’t say how.”
“That ain’t none of your business.” He drank. “Who’s this bimbo you want to find?”
“I don’t know anything about him but this: he’s a chunky little guy, about five eight or so. Likes sharp clothes. Wears a sky blue hat with a light-colored band. He likes shotguns, too. If you know him from that it’ll be a miracle.”
He stared down into his glass. “I was vice squad for fifteen years,” he said
. “I knew every gun in town. Intimately.”
“How long you been busted?”
“Five months. Like I said, I knew ’em all. I knew everybody who came to town five minutes after they got off the plane. I knew Pete Mallory, too,” he said, glancing up. “Even the ones who kept clean. I had to know. That was before I got busted. I was a conscientious bastard.”
“Who’s this one?”
“I think I know, but I could be wrong.”
I grinned at him. “Sure. Fifteen years on the same beat. You could be wrong.”
He grinned back sourly. “His name’s Winkie Gilmer. A Southern boy, from Birmingham. Connected with Holtz in Buffalo once. Then a hired gun out of Cleveland for two years. Drifted in here seven months ago and caught on right away at Zavelli’s luxury resort up the beach a few miles. Neptune Court. He don’t do nothing much but sun himself and make out with the women. He disappears now and then for a week, ten days. Probably still freelances. He’s twenty-four. He may have killed a dozen men.”
“What’s his talent?”
“Chiv.”
“Thanks.”
He poured himself another. “Don’t mention it.” He looked at me again, briefly. “You used to be up real high with Macy Barr. I thought you were out of that kind of work. I knew about you, but I never had the pleasure. Not that it’s any pleasure.”
“It gets into your blood, doesn’t it?” I said.
“What?”
“The poison you make. Why keep the badge around? Think you might get to wear it again sometime?”
“Get out,” he said dully.
“Okay.” I stood up and walked around the bed. Then I stopped and reached for my wallet.
“I don’t need it,” he said. He looked around the room. “I got plenty.”
“You gave me information I needed.”
“I didn’t do you no favor,” he said. He laughed in an ugly way. “This Gilmer is tough. He don’t goof his jobs.”
“He goofed one, or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
I got as far as the door this time. Then I swung around and his eyes were on me. They were the only bright spots in the dingy room.