Doors

by Ed McBain

  The old lady nodded again.

  “If I take my hand off your mouth, and I start out of here, and I hear you screaming even if I’m downstairs in the living room, even if I’m on my way out the front door, I’ll have to come back up here and hurt you. You understand that? I want you to understand that, because I’m not taking my hand away till you understand it. You understand it?”

  The old lady nodded again. She was wearing a pink comforter around her shoulders, and it slid off one shoulder now, and she reached to readjust it with one bony hand, but she made no move to bring her hand to his, made no try for his wrist, just adjusted the comforter and kept nodding with her eyes wide.

  “Okay,” he said, “just so we understand each other,” and he moved his hands from her head, but he did not budge from her side. His fists clenched, he waited for her to scream, waited for her to show any sign that she even intended to scream, because if she did he would hit her. He did not want to hit her, but he would do it if she screamed. He would have to.

  In a very low voice, almost a whisper, the old lady said, “Please go,” and Alex turned and bolted for the door. In the corridor outside, he tripped and fell to his knees, and picked himself up in almost the same motion, his hands pushing against the carpeted floor as he rose. He grabbed the bannister post at the top of the stairs, swung around it, and came racing down the steps to the front door. The radio was still blaring, a disc jockey was selling an amusement park in New Jersey. He unlocked the door, threw it open, ran to the car, and got in behind the wheel. Reaching for the ignition, he remembered he had put the keys in his pocket and clutched for them now, his sweaty hand reaching down into the loose change and finally extricating the keys. He was trembling as he inserted the ignition key, and twisted it, and started the car. He pressed the accelerator to the floor, and the wheels kicked back gravel before the rubber caught with a squeal and the car leaped forward. He came racing up the long driveway, braked only partially when he came to the street, and then turned right and went through the stop sign on the corner and made another right, and drove past the golf course, slowing the car only when he reached the next intersection.

  He was still breathing very hard when he got on the Hutch and started the drive back to the city.

  There was a note Scotch-taped to his door. The note had been written with a red marking pen, it virtually screamed at him from the door. He took it down and read it before putting his key into the lock.

  Dear Alex:

  I’ve been trying to reach you, but your

  phone’s unlisted. Some friends are coming

  in for drinks tonight at 5:30.

  If you’d like to join us, come on down. I

  think you’ll enjoy them.

  Jess

  He unlocked the door, went into the apartment, and read the note again, standing in the entrance foyer under the ceiling light. He didn’t want to go downstairs to drink with any of her friends, they’d probably be publishing people, and they’d start talking about books he hadn’t read. Still, if they were coming at 5:30, they wouldn’t be hanging around that long, and maybe there was a possibility he and Jessica could pick up where they’d left off Saturday night. Hell with her, he thought, what do I want to get involved with a cock-tease for? Unless they were invited for dinner, in which case they’d be there all night. And in which case why hadn’t she also invited him for dinner? No, it was probably just for drinks, and they’d sit around bullshitting about Russian writers, the hell with it. And she’d be parading around without a bra and flashing those long legs, inviting him in and then slamming the door in his face. Thanks a lot, he thought. Keep your fuckin drinks. And don’t go leaving notes on my door, okay? You want me to get ripped off? You want some burglar to go strolling by, and see the note, and realize right off there’s nobody home? Jesus!

  He was getting ready to shower when the telephone rang. He crossed the bedroom in his jockey shorts, sat on the edge of the bed, and lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Alex, this is Archie. How you doin’, man?”

  “Okay,” he said. He did not want to tell Archie about the close call he’d had in White Plains. He was always riding Archie about the risks of nighttime burglaries, he could just imagine what Archie would say if he told him about the old lady. Jesus, that was scary. Walking in on her like that. He could not get the smell of her out of his nostrils, the stink of the medicine, and the suffocating stench of her age and her bedclothes. He had blown his nose repeatedly on the way back to the city, trying to rid himself of her smell, unable to relax until he’d hit the toll booths just north of Mosholu Parkway, when at last he’d stopped looking the rear-view mirror. But her stink had pursued him all the way home and was still with him now.

  “What’s up, Arch?” he said.

  “This is bad news, man.”

  “What is it?”

  “Kitty got busted.”

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “She’s been busted before,” Alex said. “She’ll pay the fine and be out on the street again tonight.”

  “Uh-uh,” Archie said. “This wasn’t no bullshit vice arrest.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “Narcotics.”

  “She told me she was off the stuff.”

  “They caught her pushing it, Alex. She was holding half a dozen nickel bags. I don’t know how much that could weigh, I don’t think it could be too much, do you?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Even so, let’s say it was less than an eighth, okay? She could still get a year to life, depending on how tough they want to get. That new drug law is a bitch.”

  “I hear they’re easing up on it,” Alex said.

  “For users, yeah, but not dealers. If it was less than an eighth, that’s an A-III felony. Even if she gets paroled, it’ll be for life. They could send her back up anytime.”

  “Well, who told her to start pushing the damn stuff?”

  “I hear she was in trouble with some cheap racketeer, took off with his roll. That’s what they’re saying on the street. She was trying to make some bread fast. Pay the guy back, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Alex said.

  “Something, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You feel like coming up here, I think I can get us in a game. There’s a regular Tuesday night game, but two of the guys can’t make it tonight. One of them’s in the hospital with a prostate, the other one had to go to the Coast. I think I can get us in it, if you’re interested?”

  “Big stakes, or what?”

  “No, no, a buck and two. Most you could lose is a few bills. It’s a good game, I played it once, some good players. And whoever’s house it’s in, the guy springs for the booze, and they take a break about eleven, he serves coffee and cake. You feel like playing?”

  “Well, I don’t know yet. Let me call you later, okay?”

  “Not too late, though.”

  “You gonna be playing, anyway?”

  “Yeah, I thought I’d make a call, see if I can get in. If you want to play, I’ll tell them I got two of us, they can close out the game.”

  “I don’t know if I feel like playing,” Alex said.

  “Well, it’s up to you. It’s a good game, though.”

  “I don’t think so, Archie. Another time maybe.”

  “What’s the matter with you? You sound down, man.”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, give me a ring. I probably won’t be calling for a half-hour or so. If you change your mind.”

  “Okay, thanks, Archie. And thanks for telling me about Kitty.”

  “Yeah, something, huh?” Archie said, and hung up.

  Well, it wasn’t my fault, Alex thought. I told her I wanted my two grand back, but I didn’t tell her to get out there on the street and start pushing dope. That w
as her decision, she made it free and clear, it’s her responsibility she got busted. And anyway, there’s no chance she’ll get life. She’s never been busted for dope before, they had her in a dozen times on vice busts, but never on dope, so this is a first offense for her. Most she’ll get is a year, she could do that standing on one leg. Time off, she’ll be out in four months. They’ll probably send her up there to Bedford Hills, that’s not a bad place. Still, the idea of anyone being sent up troubled him. He simply could not visualize Kitty in jail. Not Kitty. Put that girl in jail, she’d go out of her mind. Well, she was in jail, she was in jail right this minute, in fact, and that was just the start of it, though he was sure they’d never hit her with a life sentence, not for a first offense. Either way, it wasn’t his fault.

  He got off the bed, looked at the clock on the dresser, and decided it was still too early for a drink. He didn’t know what he wanted to do tonight, maybe he’d call Archie back and tell him Yeah, go ahead, get him in the game. He didn’t much feel like playing poker, though. He didn’t know what he felt like doing. Jesus, that old lady had scared him. He wondered if she’d known just how scared he was, and smiled now, remembering how scared he’d been, and thinking if only the old lady had realized it, she’d have jumped out of bed and hit him with a hammer. Man, the stink of her, he could still smell her, couldn’t wait to get in that shower and wash the stink off, blow the stink out of his nose. He looked at the clock again, decided he’d rather have a nice long bath instead of a shower, and went into the bathroom to turn on the water.

  Sitting on the edge of the tub, he watched the water pouring from the spout, and thought about Jessica’s note, and wondered if he should go down there for at least a few minutes. He did read books, he probably could talk about books if that’s what the conversation got around to, though probably they’d be people who read different kinds of books than he did. He liked to read a book after he had seen the movie; that way he could visualize the scenes all over again. He got very restless in a book where there were just pages of description. Who the hell cared about fields of flowers, or what kind of furniture was in a room, or anything like that? In real life, people went around talking to each other, and that’s what he liked in books, too, when people talked to each other. Whenever he got to a section where it was supposed to be what somebody was thinking, he usually skipped that part because how could a writer know what anybody was thinking—he sometimes didn’t even know what he himself was thinking.

  Once, after reading a book where the character did a lot of thinking, Alex had tried to think about thinking. He had tried to examine his own thinking process, find out for himself how people thought. He discovered that he didn’t think in long paragraphs or even in sentences, he usually thought in pictures, like in the movies or on television, a thought usually came into his head as an action. So what was all this bullshit in books where the person was doing all this heavy thinking in long sentences that could put you to sleep? That wasn’t true to life, and books were supposed to be true to life, weren’t they? Otherwise, why bother writing the things? Or reading them, for that matter.

  Maybe he should go down, have a quick drink and then split, go up to Harlem later, get in Archie’s poker game. Or look up Daisy instead. He wouldn’t mind having a go at Daisy, be something to write home to mother about. Dear Mom, Guess what I did tonight? He laughed aloud at the thought, visualizing his mother reading the letter to Mr. Tennis Pro in his white shorts and shirt, fuckin dope probably took a tennis racket in the bathtub with him. Stay a half-hour maybe, tell her he had an appointment, sorry he had to leave so soon, it was nice meeting all of you. Stick it to her the way she’d stuck it to him Saturday night—I’ve had a lovely time, Alex, but really it’s getting very late. Maybe he would go down there, just for the hell of it.

  He took a nap after he got out of the tub, and when he woke up, the clock on his dresser read ten to six. He hadn’t called Archie about the poker game, and it was too late to do that now, so he decided to go downstairs after all, see what her publishing friends were like. He put on a simple blue cardigan sweater. He debated sports shirt he’d bought at Battaglia’s, and over that he put on a simple blue cardigan sweater. He debated whether the new patent-leather Gucci whites would go with what he was wearing, but put on a pair of blue socks and black loafers instead. Then he took the fire stairs down to the fifth floor and listened outside her door. He could hear voices in there, and music, and someone laughing, a girl laughing, it didn’t sound like Jessica. He almost changed his mind about going in, but then he pressed the bell button on the side of the door, and heard the chimes going off inside, and he waited, and heard someone coming toward the door, and the door opened.

  “Alex,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. “I’m so glad you could come.” She took his hand, and drew him into the foyer, and then closed the door behind them, not bothering to lock it. The kiss had surprised him, and her holding his hand now, as she led him into the living room, made him feel uncomfortable. But he couldn’t pull his hand away without looking foolish, so he allowed himself to be dragged across the living-room floor and over to the couch where a man and woman were sitting.

  “Alex,” she said, “I’d like you to meet two very good friends of mine, Paul and Lena Epstein. This is Alex Hardy.”

  “How do you do?” Alex said, and extended his hand to Paul, and shook it, and then became embarrassed when he realized Lena had her hand out, too. He took her hand now, shook it briefly, and then backed off a pace, looked around for a chair, and found one near the piano. He sat quickly, and Jessica said, “What are you drinking, Alex?”

  “Scotch on the rocks,” he said.

  Paul Epstein was a hawk-faced man going bald. He combed his hair sideways to disguise this, and he had on thick eyeglasses with enormous black frames. He was wearing a dark gray business suit, a white shirt, a blue tie, black shoes and socks. Alex assumed he had come there directly from work. Lena Epstein was a short, dark brunette, her hair clipped close to her face like a French whore’s. She had brown eyes and a wide mouth, and she was wearing a brown turtleneck shirt with a short suede skirt, pantyhose—he knew they were pantyhose because he could see almost clear up to her ass—and low-heeled shoes with fringed tongues. He figured she had just come from work, too; there was a grimy look about her that a woman didn’t have if she’d dressed especially for a party.

  “Alex lives right upstairs,” Jessica said.

  “I wished he lived right upstairs from me,” Lena said, and wiggled her eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

  “Listen to that, will you?” Paul said, and laughed. “And she’s sitting not two feet away from me.”

  “Here you go,” Jessica said, and handed Alex the drink. She wasn’t wearing a bra, of course, that was her specialty. No bra, blue cotton T-shirt, tight-fitting slacks, sandals. He was in a room with a cock-tease, a Jewgirl who did Groucho Marx imitations, and a jerk of a husband who thought it was funny when she flirted with a strange man. Great. He had sure made the right decision coming here.

  “Is this up too loud?” Jessica asked.

  “It’s only ear-shattering,” Lena said.

  “How’s that?” she said, turning down the volume on the stereo unit. “Is that any better?”

  “Much,” Lena said.

  “Lena has a delicate ear,” Paul said.

  “The lass with the delicate ear,” Lena said.

  “Ouch,” Paul said.

  “Or the lass with the delicate ass, if you prefer,” she said, and winked at Alex. “How do you two know each other? Did you meet in the elevator or something?”

  “We met in the lobby,” Jessica said, and walked to where Alex was sitting, and stood beside his chair, and put her hand on the back of it.

  “All you meet in the lobby of my building,” Lena said, “are perverts and muggers.”

  “And an occasional burglar,” Paul said.

  “No New York atrocity stories, please,” Jessica said.
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  “Listen,” Paul said, “if that drink’s boring you …”

  “No, the drink is fine,” Alex said.

  “What I’m saying is I have some very fine grass here, if you’d prefer that. Got it from a fellow in the office, it’s Mexican stuff. Isn’t it very fine grass, Lena?”

  “It’s very fine.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Alex said, “thanks. Jess, you ought to lock that door, if you’re going to smoke grass in here.”

  “Cops don’t bother about grass nowadays,” Lena said. “They probably smoke it themselves. When they’re not asleep in their patrol cars.”

  “Well, who’d like to share a joint with me? Jessica?”

  “Thanks, I don’t care for any,” Jessica said.

  “He’s higher than a kite now,” Lena said, “and he wants to bust another joint.”

  “Hard day at the office, honey,” Paul said, and smiled, and reached into his pocket. He took out a Sucrets tin, opened the lid, and then put the tin on the coffee table. There were four neatly rolled joints inside the tin. He took one out, lit it, toked on it, and passed it to his wife. Lena took a long hit and then offered the joint to Alex.

  “Thanks, I have the Scotch,” he said.

  “How is that stuff, huh?” Paul asked, taking the joint from his wife again.

  “Grass never affects me,” Lena said.

  “It affects you, sweetheart.”

  “Never. You get silly as hell. Me, I just sit there watching you.”

  “Bullshit. It affects you, sweetheart, take it from me.”

  “I don’t mean that way.”

  “What she does when she’s smoking,” Paul said, “she becomes recording secretary to the world at large. She keeps going back over the conversations, trying to make certain everyone knows exactly what was said two minutes ago.”