He went back to the glass and watched her through the bus windows. She didn’t look back at him. She sat staring straight ahead. She was still sitting like that when the passenger door closed and the bus pulled away.
That evening Captain Jake Grafton informed his wife that Lieutenant Toad Tarkington was getting orders to the staff of the Joint Chiefs, just as he desired.
“That’s very nice,” Callie told Jake. “Did you have to twist many arms to make it happen?”
“A couple.”
“Does Toad know yet?”
“Not yet. I think they’ll tell him in a day or two.”
“You’ll never guess who stopped me after class today to chat.”
Jake Grafton made an uninterested noise, then decided to humor her and take a stab at it. “That commie professor, ol’ what’s-his-name.”
“No. It was that Washington Post reporter, Jack Yocke. He thanked me for the party and …”
Jake went back to today’s newspaper think-piece on Soviet internal politics. For generations the forces at work inside the Communist Party had been Soviet state secrets and the subject of classified intelligence summaries that circulated inside the U.S. military. Those summaries had been mere guesses made by analysts based on poor, fragmentary information. Now the Soviets were baring all with an abandon that would make even Donald Trump blush.
As he mused on this curious miracle, Jake Grafton became aware of a questioning tone in his wife’s voice, which had risen in pitch. “Say again, dear?”
“I said, Jack suggested you and he have breakfast some morning. Would you like to do that?”
“No.”
The captain scanned the column to find his place.
“Well, why not?”
He lowered the paper and scrutinized his wife, who was poised with a ladle in one hand, looking at him with one eyebrow raised aloft. He had never been able to figure out how she got one eyebrow up but not the other. He had tried it a few times in the privacy of the bathroom with no success.
“We are not friends or social acquaintances. We haven’t said two dozen words to each other. And I have no desire to know him better.”
“Jack is a brilliant, socially concerned journalist whom you should take the trouble to get to know. He’s written an excellent book that you would enjoy and find informative: The Politics of Poverty.”
“He wants to pump me on what’s going on inside the Pentagon. And there’s absolutely nothing I can tell him. It’d be a waste of time for both of us.”
“Jake …”
“Callie, I don’t like the guy. I’m not about to waste an hour listening to him try to pump me. No.”
She sighed and went back to stirring the chili. Jake rustled the newspaper and raised it ostentatiously.
“I’ve been reading his book,” she said, undaunted. “He gave me a copy.”
“I saw it on the nightstand.”
“It’s excellent. Well written, lots of insights that—”
“If I ever become CNO and get an overpowering itch to leak something to the newspapers, Jack Yocke will be the first guy I call. I promise.”
Callie changed the subject. Her husband grunted once or twice, then she abandoned conversation. Jake didn’t notice. He was engrossed in an account of Fidel Castro’s latest speech, in which the dictator announced that the rice and meat ration of the Cuban people had been cut in half. Again. To two ounces of meat and a pound of rice per week. In addition, Cuba would henceforth purchase its oil from Mexico, not the Soviet Union, and it would cost more, a lot more. This meant more sacrifices, which Castro was confident the Cuban people would take in stride. The Cuban comrades had been betrayed by their Soviet brothers in socialism, but viva la Revolución!
The socially concerned journalist of whom Callie spoke was thinking impure thoughts. He had picked up Tish Samuels at the apartment that she shared with a mousy girlfriend and they had gone to a postwedding party at the home of a fellow reporter who had eloped several weeks ago with an oral surgeon. Earlier in the evening Yocke had been miserable company, but now, several drinks and two hours later, he was feeling fairly chipper and more sociable. Perhaps it was the cheerful bonhomie of his colleagues, who were ribbing the newlyweds unmercifully. Whatever, in spite of himself Jack Yocke had absorbed some of the glow.
Just now he stood half listening to one of the sports columnists expound on the coming NFL playoffs while he watched Tish Samuels on the other side of the room. She had glanced this way several times and was aware of his scrutiny.
The next time she looked, he gave her a wide grin. She returned it. He raised his glass at her and took a sip. She gestured with her glass in reply and nodded.
Yes indeed, in spite of everything, life goes stumbling on. And Jack Yocke did like life.
So he sipped his drink and listened to the sportswriter and assessed Tish’s womanly charms as she moved along talking to everyone. She was a tall woman, but she certainly had it in all the right places. Jack Yocke took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he waited for her to turn his way again.
The sportswriter rambled on. The most interesting events in the world were happening in the NFL. This was the Redskins’ year. Hallelujah!
Tish turned. She smiled broadly and blew him a kiss. Jack Yocke grinned foolishly, exposing every tooth in his head.
An hour later in the car, she hummed softly while he kissed her. He kissed her again and she returned it with a fervor that he found most pleasant.
Finally, reluctantly, he inserted the key in the ignition and brought the engine to life. “Where to?” he asked.
“Your place?”
“Got a roommate too. He’s home tonight.”
“The bookstore.”
He put the car in motion. In the empty parking lot in front of the strip shopping center, he parked and sat staring at the blank windows.
“Come on,” Tish said, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s.”
Jack Yocke dug in the glove box and pulled out something red and frilly. “Would you wear these?” he asked hesitantly.
There were two of them. She held the soft cloth up so the light caught it. “What are these? Garters?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged and grinned hopefully.
His grin was sort of cute, in a pathetic sort of way, Tish decided. “A little kink, eh?”
“Well, they’re just—”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I just thought …”
“Garters.” She sighed. “Jesus, I haven’t worn garters since the senior prom.” She took a good look at his face. “Oh, all right, you pervert.”
She fumbled for the seat belt release. He reached down to help. She pushed his hands away. “I’m not going to put them on here in the car, for Christ’s sake!”
“I—”
“Oh, shut up! Garters!”
Really, Tish thought as she walked toward the door of the bookstore, feeling in her purse for her keys. Is this my fate at thirty-one? Sex with oversized adolescent boys whose ideas of erotica came straight from a whorehouse?
“Are there no men left?” she murmured.
Jack Yocke missed that comment. He was furtively scanning the parking lot.
If he weren’t so good-looking and so thoroughly nice …
She opened the door and held it for him, then relocked it. The only light in the store was that coming through the display windows from the big lights in the parking area. She walked by the light switches without touching them and led the way between the book racks toward the little office by the back door. Behind her she heard Yocke stumble over something.
The second time he stumbled she heard books fall. She took his hand and led him around the racks to the office. Yocke helped her with her coat. The scruffy couch held a half dozen cartons of books, which they set on the floor.
As they undressed in the darkness, she couldn’t resist. “Why garters?”
“You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to.”
“Well—”
He touched her bare skin and all her doubts dissolved.
Afterward, with him on top and panting, she said, “We forgot the garters.”
He caressed her thighs. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re a pretty good lover, y’know. For a pervert.”
He kissed her.
“Really, be honest about the garters. I want to know.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve found that women sometimes change their minds. Yet if I give them something innocuous to think about, it takes their minds off sex and I get laid more often.”
“Oooh … youuu …”
“Now admit it, you were so busy thinking about the garters that you forgot to have second thoughts. Isn’t that so?”
Tish bucked once and pushed and he flopped off onto the floor with a thud. She closed the office door and flipped on the lights. It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust. Yocke was on his back amid the boxes, looking a little dazed.
She found the garters and pulled them on. Then she stood beside him on one leg and used the other foot to rub his chest and stomach.
“Do you like?”
“Gawd almighty,” Jack Yocke said.
Evansville, Indiana, patrolman Harrison Ronald Ford, alias Sammy Z, watched the fat white man stroll down the sidewalk looking neither left nor right. Watching him, you would have thought he owned the sidewalk and all the houses and was out collecting rent. Everything about him said he was the man.
Harrison Ronald shifted his buttocks on the cold concrete stoop where he was perched and watched the man check house numbers. When he arrived in the dim glow of the nearby streetlight, he glanced at Ford, then started up the steps on which Ford was sitting.
“Going somewhere, Fatty?”
“Got an appointment.”
“Great. I’ll bet you got a name too.”
“Tony Anselmo.”
“Why don’t you wait down there on the sidewalk and I’ll check inside. Okay?”
As Anselmo retreated to the sidewalk, Harrison Ronald checked the street again. No traffic. No one in the parked cars. No strollers or tourists other than the guards posted on each of the corners. Although the guards weren’t armed, each of them was within ten feet of a concealed Uzi. Except for the guards, this appeared to be a typical lower-middle-class black neighborhood. No crack was sold here.
Everything appeared normal to Ford’s practiced eyes.
Harrison rapped on the door and disappeared through it when it opened.
Inside the hallway sat another guard with an Uzi on his lap. He nodded as Harrison walked by. The second man locked and bolted the door behind him.
Freeman McNally was in the kitchen eating cake, drinking milk, and reading a newspaper. He was twenty pounds or so overweight and had a hairline in full retreat. Still, encased within the fat was muscle. When he moved he was light on his feet. As Ford entered he looked up from the paper.
“Guy named Tony Anselmo says he has an appointment.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Fat honkey, about fifty or so. Prosperous.”
“Let him in. After you frisk him, go on back out front.”
“Sure, Freeman.”
Out on the sidewalk, Ford said, “They heard of you. Go on in.” He followed Anselmo up the stairs.
Inside, the guard with the Uzi centered it on Anselmo’s ample middle. “Against the wall and spread ’em.”
Ford quickly patted him down, checked his belt front and back, his crotch, and his ankles. “You do that like a cop,” Anselmo rumbled.
“He’s clean,” Ford told the guard, then went back out onto the stoop and resumed his seat.
Harrison Ronald had heard of Fat Tony Anselmo. Sitting on the stoop smoking a cigarette and listening to the noises of the city at night, he tried to recall what he had read in the police intelligence briefing books. Anselmo was a soldier for a New York crime family, the Zubin Costello outfit. Bernie Shapiro was one of the three or four key lieutenants, and Anselmo was supposed to work for him. Suspected of a dozen or so hits in his younger days, Tony Anselmo had once plea-bargained a murder charge down to carrying a concealed weapon and was back on the street after six months in the can. That was the only time he had ever been in jail.
It would have been nice, Ford mused, if Freeman had invited him to remain. Sooner or later, if he lived long enough, but not yet.
As he sat on the stoop smoking, Ford speculated on whether Anselmo had asked for this meeting or Freeman had. And he formed various tentative hypotheses about the business being discussed. Certainly not the purchase of raw product: Freeman got all he could handle from the West Coast.
Money, Ford decided. They were probably doing a deal to wash or invest money. Ford assumed the Costello family had a lot of experience in both activities.
Or perhaps bribery of public officials. That was certainly a possibility.
When the glowing tip of the cigarette reached the filter, Ford lit another one from the stub. He automatically checked the street-corner guards yet again, then watched the smoke swirl on the gentle breeze.
Cold. Tonight was going to be cold. Harrison Ronald turned up the collar of his leather jacket and glanced at his watch.
“Why a bookstore?” Jack Yocke asked.
He and Tish were lying on the couch in the bookstore office in the darkness with Yocke’s coat thrown over them. She was still wearing the garters.
“It sounds silly now,” she said. “But I had to make a living at something, and I like books, so I drove around until I found a spot without a bookstore for two miles in any direction, and I rented that spot.”
“Sensible approach.”
“I thought I was very conservative. I love books. I was so certain the store would be a surefire hit. Ha! I’m barely eating. Still, two years in the business and I’m current on all my bills. That’s something.”
“Indeed it is. A lot of people can’t say that.”
“Now tell me, why a newspaper?”
“Oh, amazingly enough, in spite of the hours, in spite of the deadlines and the editors, I thought I’d like it. Talk about optimism! Sometimes I feel like a mortician. Or a minister. All the shattered lives. I spend my days galloping from tragedy to tragedy. ‘Who what when where why, ma’am, and can you spell the perpetrator’s name one more time?’ I see as much blood as an ambulance driver. I ask the kinds of questions the morticians and chaplains don’t have to ask. ‘Why do you think your husband stabbed you, Ms. Butcher?’ ‘What did the gunman say before he shot you, Mr. Target?’ ‘After he raped, mutilated, and murdered her, why do you keep insisting he’s such a good boy, Mrs. Spock?’ ”
“It must be challenging.”
“It would be,” Jack Yocke agreed, “if you had enough time to do it right, to write it right. You never do. You look at the blood—when you can get to the scene before they cart out the bodies—telephone everyone you can think of, then write six hundred words for the first edition which the editor chops in half or doesn’t like at all. Then wait, wait, check, check. Up one blind alley after another. Finally you get a good story, only to get buried under a human wave attack of other reporters as some editor finally decides that there really is a good story here on Yocke’s supposed beat but Yocke can’t cover it all by himself.”
“So why do you do it?”
“I don’t know.” He really didn’t. At night he went home to his apartment either completely drained or completely frustrated. The stories, when he got some, were never good enough. The black ink on the newsprint never captured the insanity, the fear, the terror, the grief, the desperation of the people who live the lives that make police news. The waste, the future smeared all over the floor—he could never get that into the stories.
“People just read the paper while they drink their morning coffee,” he told her, “then throw it away. Or wrap the garbage
in it. Or use it to line the cat box. Then, hi-ho, off to work or aerobics class or luncheon at the club.”
“What else could you do?”
“I’ve never been able to think of anything. And this police beat can’t last forever.”
She got up off the couch and turned on the light. She took off the garters as he watched and handed them to him. Then she began putting on her clothes.
“Get dressed and run me home. I have to get a little sleep, then be down here scrubbed and cheerful to open this place at nine. That’s when the little old ladies like to come in to see if we have any new ‘spicy’ books.”
“ ‘Spicy’?”
“Bodice rippers. Soft-core porn. That’s what pays the rent around here.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were. I sold three Amy Tans last year and just one Fay Weldon. It’s enough to make you cry.”
“Maybe you need a better location.”
“What I need is to write a sizzling world-class fuck book, one so hot it’ll melt an old maid’s panties.” She eyed him as she buttoned her blouse. “That’s what I’m scribbling on. You want to see it?”
“Sure.”
Tish opened the desk drawer and pulled it out. She had about a hundred pages of manuscript that she had whacked out on the old typewriter on the corner of the desk. He flipped through the pages, scanning.
“The rule is no four-letter words. His cock is always his love member.”
“Looks fine to me,” Yocke said, and handed it back. He bent down to retrieve his trousers.
When he straightened up she was reading carefully. After a moment she tossed the pile of paper back in the drawer. “It’s shit, I know, but that’s what sells. And goddamn, if shit sells, that’s what I’m going to write.”
Twenty minutes later, in front of her apartment building, she said, “Don’t get out. I can make it to the door.”
He bussed her on the cheek.
“Are you going to call me again, or was this just a one-night stand?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
After he drove away he felt grubby. Oh well, what’s one more lie in a world full of them.
Harrison Ronald—Sammy Z—got off work at five a.m. One of his colleagues dropped him at the apartment house he called home. He went upstairs and made a pot of coffee. Then, at the kitchen table, he tackled the crossword puzzle in the early edition of the Post.
05.Under Siege v5 Page 16