Free Live Free

by Gene Wolfe

  The clown nodded.

  “Is there anything you can tell me about it?”

  The clown nodded again. “They don’t have any children.”

  And Now The News

  The newsstand was so narrow it scarcely seemed a store at all. It squeezed between a snack bar and a dry cleaner’s as though someone ignorant of the ways of commerce had set out, given a trifle of waste space and a little money, to imitate an actual store. One felt that only very thin magazines, magazines filled entirely with pictures of thin, naked brunettes in the arms of hairy men, could be sold there, that only the thin papers (dated two months back) of little, one-horse towns and the thin, foreign-language weeklies of obscure Eastern European nationalities could ever be hung from the clips of its festoons of picture wire, hung beside the lavender and rose tip sheets for the horse races, the fly-spotted Gypsy Dream Keys for the numbers game. It smelled of coal smoke, printers ink, and mold.

  Majewski sidled in, shoulders turned so he would not scrape the magazines from the walls, not overturn the thick stacks of the New York Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times. “He in there?” he asked the old man who sat in the back of the store.

  “Is who in there?”

  “You know damn well who I mean. Barney. I want to see him.”

  The old man shook his head. “He’s got somebody with him.”

  The newsstand grew darker as it crept away from the street, illuminated at first with bare bulbs hanging from bare wires and then with nothing, so that the rearmost wall, where the old man sat tilted in his chair, seemed black as ink. A voice came from the blackness now, hearty but muffled. “Let him in. It’s okay.”

  Resignedly, the old man moved his chair to one side. Majewski turned the knob and stepped through.

  The room was no wider than the newsstand, but brightly lit. It held an old wooden desk with an old wooden swivel chair behind it, a single, hard-looking, straight-backed chair, a small safe, and two men.

  The larger of these leaned against the wall. He had a round, ruddy, freckled face, and he wore a police uniform. The smaller sat behind the desk. His face was dark, and he had a darker mustache mixed of black and gray.

  “Nothing to worry about,” the policeman said. “We’ve done our business, and I was just going. What’s your name, son?” He was no older than Majewski.

  Majewski looked at the man behind the desk, who nodded. “Joe Majewski,” Majewski said.

  “And you’re already a bellhop at the Consort.” The policeman looked at the red uniform cap Majewski wore with his overcoat and nodded approvingly. “You live around here, Joe?”

  Majewski shook his head. The dark man behind the desk said, “I knew where he lives.”

  “I bet you do. What do you need the money for, Joe? Pay off your bookie?”

  “Make the payment on my TV. If I don’t give them something pretty soon, they’ll take back my set.”

  “How about that. Well, at least it keeps you off the streets, huh?” The policeman straightened up and reached for the doorknob. “See you around, Barney.”

  “So long, Evans.”

  “What was that about?” Majewski asked as the door closed.

  “What do you think it was about? I got to operate, don’t I? What the hell do you think I do with the interest you pay, send my dog to college? I got to pay off the precinct, I got to pay off the juice squad, I got to pay off my alderman. That was precinct. Don’t ask how much.”

  “How much?”

  “Don’t ask. One hell of a lot. If I didn’t have the magazines out front, I couldn’t make it. And that son of a bitch will cop Penthouse as sure as hell. How much do you want?”

  “Seventy.”

  “That all?”

  Majewski nodded. “I get paid tomorrow, Barney, but I got to have it before I go to work today. You know I’m good for it.”

  “Okay. Five for four until the end of next week. That’ll be eighty-eight. If you can’t make it, five for four at the end of the next week. That’ll be a hundred and ten. Don’t let it go no farther than that.”

  Majewski nodded again.

  The dark man took a thick billfold from his coat and gave him a fifty and a twenty, neither new. “I trust you, Joe,” he said. “Don’t let me down. I got so many collections going now it’s killing me.”

  “See you next Saturday.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Majewski turned the knob and backed through the door, closing it after him. The old man still sat with his chair tilted, a limp, sweat-stained gray hat—an old man’s hat—pulled over his eyes. A short, brisk girl was peering and poking among the magazines. She glanced at Majewski, then looked again in what actors call a double take. “I know you!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, lady, you’re one up on me,” he told her.

  “Last night when I came into the Consort, you asked me if I was Miss Garth, or if I knew who she was. And I remembered the name because later I met Candy Garth, and she seemed to know Madame Serpentina. Why were you looking for her? For Miss Garth, I mean.”

  “I don’t remember,” Majewski said. He made no effort to push past her.

  The girl stared at him for a moment, then fumbled in her purse and produced a dollar.

  Majewski allowed himself a slight grin. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s coming back to me.”

  “Was it Madame Serpentina who told you to look for Miss Garth?”

  “Huh uh. A guy.”

  “A small man with glasses?”

  Majewski shook his head. “I didn’t see him. He phoned down to the lobby. I was hoping for a tip out of it, because I knew it was her room and the lady’s a good tipper, but I haven’t seen her since. To tell the truth, I’ve been kind of ducking her because I owe her, but now I’m set to pay her, and I’ll remind her about finding the girl in the white coat for the guy up in her room.”

  “You said Madame Serpentina was a good tipper. Will you tell me about that?”

  “Boy, you want a whole lot for your buck, don’t you? Ten each for the three guys that carried up her bags.”

  “Was the man with the thick glasses with her then?” the girl asked.

  “No.” Majewski tried to edge by her. “There wasn’t nobody with her. I never seen this guy. Listen, lady, I’ve given you one hell of a lot more than a buck’s worth. I got to go.”

  “Here.” She fumbled in her purse again. “Here’s another dollar, all right? She was alone when she checked in? Did she come in a cab, or do you know?”

  “Huh uh.” Majewski paused and snapped his fingers. “Come to think of it, I did see the little guy with the glasses, maybe. See, when we’re not too busy we’re supposed to help the guests bring their stuff in from outside. Then we set it in the lobby while they register.”

  The girl nodded.

  “Anyway, I think I saw somebody like that—little guy, thick glasses, hat pulled down—talking to her. Then later I saw him in the lobby at registration. I don’t know if that was him on the phone.”

  “Did you see him at the hotel after that?”

  Majewski shook his head. “Of course, I ain’t been at work much. I work afternoons and evenings—I’m due in a couple hours.”

  “How about the woman in the white raincoat? Or the man with the black mustache? I was talking to him in the lobby later. You must have seen us.”

  “I never noticed him,” Majewski said. “I ain’t seen the fat lady again either.”

  “Here’s my card.” The short girl pressed it into his hand. “Talk to the people you work with. If you find out where the man with the glasses and the woman in the white raincoat live, call me and let me know. Especially the man with the glasses. Or if you see him and can tell me where he is. I’ll pay ten dollars.” She hesitated. “Each. Ten dollars for each one.”

  Majewski glanced at the card. “Okay, Miss Duck. But listen, I ought to level with you. You remember when you asked me about the little guy with the glasses a minute ago? And all of a sudden I remembered seein�
� him on the sidewalk?”

  Sandy Duck nodded.

  “Well, the reason I remembered was I just saw him walk past outside.” He pointed beyond her toward the glass door at the front of the newsstand.

  She rushed out, then stopped abruptly, looking up and down the street. More philosophically, Majewski followed her.

  Cough!

  “Take off your shirt,” Dr. Makee rumbled. He himself still wore his tattersall, with herringbone trousers and a bolo tie. His gray herringbone jacket hung from the back of a chair in one corner of his examination room.

  “I’m not really sick,” Barnes explained. “I just want to talk.”

  “Take it off,” the old doctor said firmly. “I don’t care what the hell you came here for, I’m going to listen to your heart or I won’t talk to you.”

  “I can’t pay you.”

  “Take it off!” He strode up to Barnes and began to unfasten the buttons himself.

  “All right,” Barnes said. “All right.” He pulled loose his tie and hung it on a halltree beside a dusty skeleton, then slipped out of his suitcoat and undid the rest of his shirt buttons.

  “That’s better.” The old doctor sipped coffee from a mug on his desk and wiped his white mustache with the back of his hand. “I know you can’t pay. If you could pay, you’d go to a real doctor in the medical center, not to a crazy old retired quack like me. Nobody comes here that can pay, even if some of them do. I know you’re not sick, too. Or anyway, you don’t think you are. I could see that the minute you walked in. A sick man walks one way, a well one another way; but a man who’s sick and doesn’t know it might walk like John Wayne. Hell, John Wayne walked like John Wayne when he was full of cancer. When a man your age comes in here, I always listen to his heart. Suppose you said you weren’t sick, and I accepted it, and you walked out of here and fell down dead on my sidewalk. I’d never forgive myself.”

  He stood and adjusted his stethoscope, then thrust its dangling end against Barnes’s belly. “Cough!”

  Barnes coughed.

  “That’s not for your heart, that’s your lungs.” The old doctor put his instrument in half a dozen other places, occasionally rapping Barnes’s ribs with his knuckles. “How long since you’ve had a good physical?”

  “Five years, maybe. Six.”

  “I thought so. Now I want you to skip in place. Watch how I do it.” He hopped from one leg to the other; Barnes tried to imitate him. “Good enough. You want to see how a sick man walks?” The old doctor hunched one shoulder and lurched about, dragging a leg. “This is sick!” He chuckled fiendishly and clawed with his spotted old man’s hand at Barnes’s bare shoulder. “Yes, Master! Igor will obey!”

  Barnes recoiled, and the doctor straightened up and shoved his stethoscope against his chest again. “Nothing like a little anxiety to bring up the pulse rate.”

  “I just wanted to ask you about Mr. Free,” Barnes said.

  “Ben Free?” Dr. Makee took the earpieces from his ears, walked around his desk, and sat down. “Your heart seems to be pretty good. What did you say your name was?”

  “Osgood M. Barnes.”

  “Well, I don’t think you have a problem there, Mr. Barnes. Just the same, I’m going to check your blood pressure. Put on your shirt again, and come over here and sit down. Father deceased?”

  Taking his shirt from the halltree, Barnes nodded.

  “What did he die from?”

  “Accidental causes.”

  The old doctor sipped his coffee. “You’d just as soon not talk about it, I take it. Fine with me. Sit down here and let me do the blood pressure. You can put on your tie but not your coat. You wanted to ask me something about Ben Free?”

  Barnes nodded again.

  “Thought you lived with him. I’ve seen you over there, so you ought to know more than I do. Put your arm here, level, on my desk. You got your breath? Heart pretty well slowed down?”

  “Yes, fine,” Barnes said. “I did live with him. You’re right about that, Dr. Makee.”

  “You were over there when I stitched up the fella that got hit with the ax.”

  “Yes, I was. But Mr. Free was gone by then—we didn’t know where he was. We still don’t. We’re hoping you can tell us.”

  The old doctor wrapped a rubber cuff around Barnes’s arm. “I won’t, because I don’t know. That satisfy you? Don’t know where he went when they started to wreck his house. Don’t know where I’ll go myself when they start on this one.”

  “It’s not a question of my being satisfied, Doctor. We’re worried about him. He’s lost his home. We’d like to help him if we can.”

  “Out of the goodness of your hearts? I don’t believe you, Mr. Barnes. People don’t do those things. They think they do, but they don’t. Something happens, and they think if it weren’t for such-and-such I’d do so-and-so. But such-and-such is always there, except when so-and-so might put money in their pockets.”

  “Are you saying there aren’t any humanitarians? I’d have said you were one, Doctor. You said you were retired, too. Why do you take care of your patients?”

  “Thunderation, somebody’s got to. Besides,” the old doctor chuckled, “because I do, I can get away with just about anything I want around this neighborhood. You notice how I made you take off your shirt soon as you came in here?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I do that with all of them. Make ’em strip so I can check their heart and lungs. For decency’s sake, if a lady or one of these young gals has on a brassiere, I don’t make her take it off. But lots of these young gals don’t wear them now—you know that?”

  “Yes,” Barnes said. “I’ve noticed that myself.”

  “And when they do, why frequently they have these real lacy, frilly things. I like them damn near as well. You’re too young to recall what it was like in my day, Mr. Barnes. But back when I was a boy, if I saw down the front of a good-looking gal, I’d really seen something. Why, I thought about something like that for a month afterward. Why when we got the Monkey Ward catalog, my ma used to tear out the pages with the ladies’ unmentionables to keep my brothers and me from lookin’ at ’em.”

  Barnes grinned. “You’re not really that old, Doctor. You know, you remind me a lot of Mr. Free.”

  “Well, I ought to.” The old doctor began to pump the blood-pressure cuff. “He was my son, you know.” Barnes stared at him, and he chuckled again. “Not my actual son—Tommy died a long while ago, and I think Ben was really a few years older than I am. But we used to pretend that way, and we had a lot of fun. I was the dad because of my mustache. Ben shaved his face all over back then. He’s got more hair on his face than I do now.”

  Barnes nodded.

  “That’s right, you saw him many a time.” The old doctor pressed his stethoscope to the inside of Barnes’s elbow and cocked his head. The air escaping from the cuff made a faint hiss, the sigh of a sleepy serpent. “Started when we were coming home on the bus one time. I’d wrenched my knee a little, and Ben gave me a hand up the steps—your blood pressure’s okay, Mr. Barnes. Good, in fact, for a man like you, because you’re lean. Get plenty of exercise and stay away from rich food, anything sweet or greasy. Never salt a thing.”

  “I won’t,” Barnes said. “Thanks for the tip. I hope your knee’s better now.”

  “Knee? Oh, sure, the story. Well, sir, Ben helped me up, and then there wasn’t two seats together, so I took the one up front and Ben sat about three rows back, next to a lady about my age.

  “And when we were both settled down, she said something like, ‘Will your friend be all right?’ and Ben said something like, ‘Doc’ll be okay.’ Only the lady was a mite deef, and she thought he said Dad’ll be okay. So she said, ‘Oh, is he your father? Such a distinguished looking man!’ Well, Ben’s always a great kidder—you could say just about anything to him and he’d go along with it. So he told her he was sixty-nine and I was ninety-one, and how we’d lived together all our lives, and so on so forth. From then
on it’s been a joke we pick up every once in a while.”

  “You haven’t really known Mr. Free all your life?” Barnes asked.

  “No, of course not. Only since he moved in across the street.”

  “How long has that been, Dr. Makee?”

  “Just a few years.”

  “Dr. Makee, I know you think I’m prying into something that’s really none of my business, but Mr. Free‘s—your friend Ben’s—missing, and all of us who lived there with him are concerned about him. We’re afraid something may have happened to him, and until we find out nothing has, we’re going to keep looking.”

  The old doctor nodded, his face expressionless. “Have you called the police?”

  “No,” Barnes said. “Not yet.”

  “That’s what most people would do, Mr. Barnes.”

  “We’re not …” Barnes hesitated.

  “Not what?”

  “Not the sort of people the police pay much attention to, Doctor. A man in your position—you’re a physician, you own this house, you have a certain status in the community.”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever noticed it.”

  “I think—Dr. Makee, I used to be a regional sales manager for the Continental Crusher Division of Yevco Incorporated. I had a house and a wife and kid. Two cars, a gold American Express Card, all that stuff.”

  The old doctor nodded. “What happened?”

  “A lot of things. The point I want to make is that when I lost all that, I lost it so slowly I hardly noticed it happening. The wife and the kid and the house and one car first. That was all in one lump.”

  “I see.”

  “Then my job. After that I went through five jobs in a little over a year. Each of them looked nearly as good as the last one—do you know what I mean? I know you’re thinking it was my own fault, but not all of it was. Like, once I was sales manager for a small company. They got bought up by a big one, and I was out. They said I could stay around as a sales trainee if I wanted, and I told them to stuff it. Today I’d jump at that.”

  The old doctor nodded again.

  “I’m getting way off my point. What I wanted to say was that one day I was making a call at a liquor store. The man who owned it was out front by the register, and he didn’t want any. You know how they do, ‘I ain’t got time, come back next month,’ all that bullshit.”