by Jim Nisbet
Seam held the smile. “Oh. You have one?”
“No.”
Seam’s smiled faded. “Pardon me?”
“There’s nothing to sign,” Pauley said gently. “Go get the cash instead.”
Seam didn’t object. But he didn’t move, either.
“It was six C-notes, last time I saw it,” Pauley added.
Seam took the trouble to appear slightly puzzled.
“But any denomination will do.” Pauley finished his glass of beer. “So long as it adds up to six hundred dollars.” He emptied the rest of the bottle into his glass. “No checks.”
“I–I don’t–” Seam began.
“Yes, you do,” Pauley said, putting down the empty bottle. “That truck was a lemon and you know it.”
A thousand thoughts went through Seam’s head, though all of them added up to the same thing: “Was?” he asked.
Pauley was through smiling. The beer was making him tired, but not so tired as to prejudice the resolution of an already complex deal by telling Seam his truck was, for all practical purposes, no longer in existence. “Still is a lemon, Seam.” He looked the boy straight in the eye and narrowed his own. “You want I should fix it for you before I bring it back?”
“Well you could hardly blame–”
“Kind of like you fixed it for me?”
“Why, why that’s–”
Pauley slammed the table with the palm of his hand. The bottles jumped, and so did Seam.
“I do, Seam,” Pauley said. “I blame you.”
“Okay, okay,” Seam capitulated, placing his glass of beer on the table. “You blame me.” He tried to set his jaw, but his lip quivered. “You and everybody else in the world.…”
Pauley drained his glass and set it loudly on the table. “Oh, Christ, spare us the embarrassment of your squirming.” He leaned back and slid two fingers into the watch pocket of his jeans. “Here’s the key.” It skipped onto the table top and clinked against the base of Martin’s beer glass.
Martin looked at the key and said nothing.
“I don’t want to fight about it,” Pauley said, watching him.
Martin took a deep breath, not touching the key but looking at it. “Well,” he said, exhaling. “I had to try. I had so much money wrapped up in that dog.…” He raised his eyes to meet Pauley’s. “I had nowhere to turn. How was I to know that you.…” He shifted his eyes around the room and brought them to rest momentarily on the key. Then he shrugged, and half-smiled. “Nothing personal,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Pauley.
“No hard feelings?”
“The money, Seam.”
“Of all the people who might have answered that ad.…” Seam said wistfully. He shook his head.
“Sure,” said Pauley.
“Sure,” Seam repeated, as if coming to his senses. “Right away. It’s just like you gave it to me. I haven’t had time to even break one of the bills. Too busy. Haven’t spent a dime of it. To tell you the truth I was feeling kind of bad that I–”
“Peachy,” said Pauley. He pointed at the empty bottle. “You have another beer?”
“Sure. Have the rest of mine,” Seam said, sliding his across the table and heading toward the kitchen. “It’s good, isn’t it? I’ll get another. I just happen to have a whole six-pack of them. You never know when friends are going to drop by–”
Passive-aggressive, Pauley was thinking as he reached for Seam’s bottle. The kid lies just to be lying. It was good beer though, thick and nutritious, a meal in a bottle as Horse liked to say, and Pauley poured it slowly down the side of his glass. A thick vanilla barm built on the surface of the molasses-colored beer, as the glass filled. Maybe he’d hang on to this bit of coke in his pocket, not waste it on this kid, go back to Celeste and polish off the evening, just the two of us. At a sound behind him he cast a glance into the thin mirror beyond the table, and in it beyond his own shoulder he saw reflected Seam’s right hand, holding a fresh bottle of Beck’s. Well, he thought, returning his attention to the filling glass. On second thought it was a relief the kid wasn’t putting up a fight. Maybe he would lay a line on him after all, to show a paucity of hard feelings.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to share that one anyway,” said Seam behind him, and he slammed the point of the electric flatiron into the side of Pauley’s head.
Chapter Fourteen
SEAM HAD A BAD FEELING IN THE PIT OF HIS STOMACH. LIKE the sushi he had just eaten was still alive and homesick. He hadn’t had this feeling in a long time, not since a really bad night in Japantown, but this was worse. It was much worse than Japantown or even the time Mrs. Hillegass thought she’d caught him coming out of the employee’s bathroom just off Men’s with three $150 shirts on. It was only later it turned out she’d thought it was only two shirts. That had been the first time he’d ever realized what it was like to be cornered, truly cornered. It was a rotten feeling, among the worst he’d ever experienced. He’d been caught nearly red-handed. Only a supreme hauteur on his part had narrowly averted total disaster. That, and some nifty sleight-of-shirt. But in retail, unless they catch you hijacking a truck, all they do is take your job. No cops, they don’t want that kind of publicity. Kind of like today. Word gets around, of course. But people, especially fashion people, quickly forget. Help a buyer make a smart choice for next season, and if the buyer has enough character modifying his or her bitchiness to let a little credit fall where credit is due, all is forgiven. If he’d been blinded by embarrassment–and he had: mortification was more like it–the rage was much worse, far beyond what he’d imagined himself able to summon or project. The first time she almost caught him an unreasoning hatred had suffused his cleverness. It was almost as if Mrs. Hillegass herself had been in the wrong and himself in the right! Well of course she was in the wrong, and he in the right. How dare she go around protecting a two-million-dollar inventory like it was all her very own, the old busy-body! Pissing on the four corners of her miserable territory, is more like it. And this thought had amused him. It had given him the key to his revenge. What better way to punish Mrs. Hillegass for nearly discovering Martin Seam in the act of stealing from the company than to treat her as if she herself had committed the crime? There could be no greater irony.
This incident was the first time he’d ever realized what he might be capable of doing if he were ever, truly, really cornered. For, while the trap he had laid for Mrs. Hillegass was simple, it was also a lashing out, a striking back, vicious and infantile. It was clever, too, if he said so himself, a matter of a little merchandise misplaced–into her purse. If a woman is always on the lookout for someone to take something out of her purse, she is never on the lookout for a person to be putting some pricey bit into her purse! So simple! And the theft detector? Well no need to cut the theft detector out of the deal–it lit up like the Christmas tree on Union Square! There Mrs. Hillegass stood, right in the middle of a line of people, her fellow employees, everyone impatient to go home, and she sets off the theft alarm! Was she embarrassed?
He had to give her credit though. She had her own hauteur. And that pansy security guard! Begging her pardon as he searched her purse!
Seam made his little mouth even smaller, and curled his lip at the memory. She’d been gracious about it, too.
No matter. Up came the $6,000 watch–the Beep-A-Creep was still on it! Well something had to set off the theft detector.
How the crowd gasped! It must be incredible to be in show business.…
Martin had to give her credit. She appeared to be as genuinely amazed as the next person in line. It looked very genuine. But when the guard sheepishly held up the watch and asked her about it, she refused to speak to anyone but the big boss, Mr. Gramercy.
Martin was queued six people behind her, with a face of stone. She had no reason to suspect him–none at all! But as she led the security guard back toward Mr. Gramercy’s office, when they passed Martin she seemed to recognize him suddenly, as if she hadn’t se
en him in a long time. His face didn’t change. He’d held up his end—barely. Enough so that he hadn’t made the connection a few minutes later, just as he was clearing the metal detector himself, when he noticed Claude Wong knocking and gaining admittance into Mr. Gramercy’s office. So Martin had fooled himself again. And he kept on fooling himself. Martin imagined then and even more later that there had been a tell-tale gleam of triumph in his own eyes, in his face of stone, that only she could see. Many times he’d tried to recreate that gleam in the bathroom mirror. But it was hard, no, it was impossible to back up far enough away from the mirror in his own tiny bathroom to get the proper perspective, a rueful thing. He wanted to see himself just as she’d seen him, from about five feet away. No such luck “below decks,” as he referred to the well in which his apartment’s “head” was to be found: a jauntily nautical solution, that, to a claustrophobic reality. He’d finally been unable to resist trying out his pose of triumphant disdain in front of the mirror in the employee bathroom at work. It was hard to get that place to yourself, but one day he almost had it perfect when his concentration was broken, and he’d refocused his eyes in the mirror to discover three people–count them, three!–crowded into the entrance to watch him. As he’d lately found out of course the camera made four. No wait–wrong mirror–now he’s paranoid of mirrors! What brutality.… What a laugh they’d had. They, not he. They made fun of him. They thought he was working up the nerve to ask Clementina in Housewares out on a date! The memory was painful.
The trick with the watch had almost worked, too. Had it been his fault that she was so trusted, that Mr. Gramercy had so much confidence in Mrs. Hillegass that the plan had misfired? Who would have guessed that Claude Wong had joined in the conspiracy against him? His own union steward! It was a testimony to his prowess he’d held out against them as long as he had! Well. In the end it had worked out–almost–for Mrs. Hillegass had at last conceived a well-placed fear of Martin Seam. She alone, he felt, knew of his truly monstrous capabilities.
And of course no one believed her. Martin Seam a monster? Impossible! He’s a fashion victim! Nothing more! A jerk! He can’t even get up the nerve to ask Clementina in Housewares out on a date! That embarrassment had certainly worked to his advantage.
So fear festered in her breast. Hah. Mrs. Hillegass gestated her very own, very nice case of paranoia! She was a wreck! And he got to watch it grow, day after day! And he got to steal the company blind, while she muddled about, trying to catch him. Each time he was cleverer. And each time she was less competent in her endeavors to trap him. And if she had finally caught him for real? Like today for instance?
Hey. No problem. Maybe he would kill her. Ha ha. Put on another record. Ha ha ha. Turn it up. Ha ha ha ha.
Well Martin Seam, psycho bigshot, was cornered now, and it was for real. Martin Seam was scared, too. This guy Pauley was big. Mean. Tattooed. And in the right. At least, Pauley-guy thought he was in the right. Was it Martin Seam’s fault that Pauley-guy got stung in a used car deal? It happened to people every day! He worked with his hands, though. Yech. And one look at him told you he’d been around. All those places one would never want to be caught dead in. Prisons, for example. Cargo ships. Tenements. Beer bars. The guy wasn’t going to stand for any sophisticated bullshit. Martin knew it. The day Pauley-guy and that freaky but strangely foxy girlfriend of his came to look at the truck Martin knew it. From the moment he saw them, he knew he shouldn’t sell them that truck. Maybe if they hadn’t teased him so much he wouldn’t have sold it to them. The next guy that came along would have bought it. And the next guy that came along wouldn’t have had the guts to come looking for his money back. How many guys would know the difference! Herb Lee had told him there was no way to tell how long that cracked thingamajig was going to last. Herb Lee told Martin somebody might be able to drive it a few blocks at a time for a year! Only a heavy workout, Herb Lee had said, would bring out the flaw. And even then, they might just let it cool off, refill the radiator, and drive on.…
Well, something Pauley-guy had done to that Toyota must have brought out the flaw; a one in a hundred chance, a thousand, a million!
Martin Seam stood with the flat iron in his hand and looked at Pauley. Even crumpled on the floor, looking like a featherbed blown off a laundry line, the guy was truly terrifying. He had long white hair, a ponytail, big arms, meaty hands, hair bristling out of ragged holes in some kind of faded turquoise Cuban bongo shirt, incongruously skinny bow-legs and crow’s feet beneath the blood around his eyes that had probably cost him years of squinting at things he didn’t like or wanted to kill and may or may not have killed. Kind of like Martin was squinting now. And that tear tattooed at the corner of his eye, how maudlin. Even the dog-chain that went from Pauley’s belt to the wallet in his back pocket bugged Martin. Nobody dressed like that! He hit him again.
Seam bent to hit Pauley a third time in the head with the flat iron and a fourth, holding the iron at arm’s length in one hand, using the household weapon stiff-armed like a kid trying to throw a ball who’s never thrown one before. The cord and the unopened bottle of Beck’s he held in the other hand and the rest of himself he held well away from the nasty work, as if he were trying to finish off the business end of a snake cut already into two or three pieces.
That awkwardly done, Seam suddenly got efficient. He took the iron into the kitchenette, rinsed it, dried it, and replaced it on the ironing board. The pink water spiraling in the badly lit sink gave him something to stare at. He suddenly opened the beer and drank straight from the bottle, which he almost never did except at tacky parties where the only alternative was a plastic cup. Then he dug up an old Cher record he’d never gotten around to selling and lifted Pauley-guy’s head by one ear enough to slide the cardboard sleeve beneath it, so as not to get blood on the carpet. From behind the ear a knife-sharpened stub of yellow pencil fell. He collected it along with broken bits of glass, and sponged up the spilled beer and a little blood. Then he went through Pauley’s pockets.
The wallet was first, and in this he found twenty-five dollars and a Sears credit card. Amazing, Seam thought, they’ll give credit cards to anyone these days, and he flipped it and the money onto the table. Seam himself had nine cards, and therefore knew precisely how useful it could be to wrap his avarice around a card that belonged to somebody else. Besides, running a credit card up to its maximum qualified one for valuable free annual bonus gifts from the issuing concern. Grateful for patronage. There remained a ring of keys and a loose one, which he added to the collection on the table.
The cash was hardly negligible. For the truth was, only $175 or so of what Pauley had continued to think of as ‘his’ six hundred dollars remained in Seam’s possession. The Vietnamese gas station alone had claimed nearly four hundred of it, in return for patching up the Toyota engine on spec. It hadn’t been so much of a trick getting them to put the motor back together and get it running. After all, they were already several hundred into the job for parts and labor. The trick had been getting Herb Lee to let Martin gets his hands on the truck long enough to unload it on some chump with an eye for the underpriced ride. That’s where the fifteen-hundred dollars worth of pull-out AM/FM stereo CD/cassette machine had gone, with booster amp, equalizer and two pairs of speakers, he couldn’t believe how fast Herb Lee’s boys got it out of the dash and into the bottom drawer of Herb Lee’s metal desk in his office, as a token of their mutual sincerity and esteem until such time as Martin could get the cash necessary to pay off his bill and redeem it so he could pawn it. Nothing personal. Herb Lee even kept the pull-out chassis, just to make sure the deal would work out one way or the other. Moreover, when Martin had shown up with the balance due, Herb Lee laughingly pointed out that it was a good thing Martin had sold the truck, because if he had come back with the cash and the truck he was going to charge Martin for reinstallation of the electronics. The gall!
Well. Herb Lee didn’t run the only Vietnamese gas station in San Francisco.
Then again, he reflected, if on the outside chance any mutual masturbation was about to be happening at his place this weekend, he had some straightening up to do.
He realized he was feeling slightly aroused, and this shocked him, which increased his titillation, which shocked him again, a vicious and charming escalation. These sensations were indecently related to the coincidental presence of an actual deceased person, through whose pockets Seam was still making his careful progress. Who would have thought it was possible to get horny with a corpse in the room?
Then he found the cocaine.
Getting horny with a corpse in the room is one thing.
Snorting cocaine with a corpse in the room is something else entirely.
Cocaine! Surely, God was in Her heaven tonight. Seam was astounded at his luck, and more was to follow. Seam was not a man to be buying drugs; he never had the money for them. He was however just the man to consume drugs paid for by other people, if and when they should appear, with precipitate alacrity. Enshrined in a drawer in the “entertainment center” he kept miscellaneous drug paraphernalia–all of it stolen, and long since idled by the awareness of his avarice shared by even the most remote acquaintances among Martin’s ever-narrowing circle of friends. The opened gram, a razor blade, a straw, a little grinder, and an inverted ceramic saucer with a flat bottom appeared on the table instanter. He turned off all the lights save for the tiny 15-watt spot in a fixture dangling from the low ceiling, which illuminated a tiny round theater on the table top below. A dream date with himself! He rubbed his hands. He paced first this way, then that. He spiked an imaginary football over the dark unmoving shoulder of Pauley, stretched on the floor beyond the edge of the light like a vanquished defender. Football? He only pretended to pay attention to the 49ers because everybody else took them so seriously, although some of the team’s accessories were expensive enough to covet, but there were lots of parties during football season and, besides, the spiking gesture is universal. Then he put on some low music, something with an inexorable beat kind of like life itself. Finally he sat to the table. Immediately he got up again, and rushed to the kitchenette. He snapped on the light, and after a great deal of thrashing among the empty bottles on top of the refrigerator, souvenirs of half-decent wines, creme de menthes, and beers long since consumed, he found the half-empty pint of Korbel he’d removed from beneath the front seat of the Toyota pickup truck only five or six days before, where Marcie had stashed and forgotten it. He returned to the “entertainment room” with the bottle and a fluted glass brimming with brandy, turned back halfway to kill the kitchen light and circled again towards the launching pad. Then he U-turned to the kitchen again to turn on the light, U-turned to unplug the phone, U-turned to turn off the light, and U-turned back to the launching pad. A delicious tizzy! The half pint of Korbel reminded him of the quart of rancid kefir he’d deliberately left behind the seat as a nasty surprise for the rude new owner. The kefir had also been left there by Marcie, she liked to chase her brandy with carob-flavored kefir like a Brandy Alexander except healthy. But had Pauley-guy found it? Ha ha. With his nose? Ha ha ha. The nose knows. Ha ha ha ha.