“Why don’t you go home and take a bath and stay home?”
“Who’d pay the water bill? And who the hell do you think you are, an evangelist or something?”
“I just don’t like to see people playing themselves for a sucker.”
Our drinks came, and the girl raised her pink cocktail: “Here’s to you, sucker.”
“Hello, sucker.” My second drink tasted better than my first one.
“How well do you know Kerch?” she said after a pause.
“Don’t know him at all.”
“That’s funny. You were talking as if you knew him.”
“I don’t have to know him not to like him, if that’s what you mean.”
“Wait till you get to know him. Then you’ll really not like him.”
“I wish he’d try to touch me. I’d tear him down and rebuild him.”
“Don’t try that,” she said soberly. “You’d get hurt.”
“Don’t tell me he’s a tough boy in addition to all his other virtues.”
“He’s not tough.” There was a contemptuous snarl in her taut voice. “He’s as soft as jelly—but he’s got tough boys working for him.”
“Like Garland? He’d make some man a good wife.”
“You know Garland, do you? It’s true what I said, appearances are deceptive. Garland is a very dangerous boy.”
“He wouldn’t be so dangerous if somebody took his gun away.”
“Maybe not. But who’s going to take his gun away? It’s been tried.”
“So what happened?”
“So there was business for the morgue. Kerch has Jahnke, too. Rusty makes the slot-machine collections. He hasn’t got much on the ball, but he’s pretty rugged. He used to be a boxer when he was in Pittsburgh.”
She finished her drink and held up the empty glass. “All this talking makes me thirsty.”
“I’ll get you a glass of water.”
She laughed. “You’re the damndest cheapskate I ever sat down with.”
“How much of a cut do you get on a drink?”
“Couldn’t we keep this on a glamorous basis?”
“How glamorous? Champagne?”
She laughed again. “Thirty cents. Thirty cents a drink. Just like piecework in the rubber factory.”
“Except that this is cleaner work, I suppose?”
“In a way, it is. In case you’re wondering, I tried working in the rubber factory. It wasn’t for me. I didn’t like the smell. I didn’t like what it did to my hands. And I don’t like getting pushed around.”
“You have pretty hands.”
“Think so?” she said without enthusiasm. “It’s about time you flattered me a little. You make a girl feel she’s losing her grip.”
I caught the waitress’s eye and ordered two more drinks.
“You say you don’t like being pushed around, but you work here. Don’t you get pushed around quite a bit?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s why I’m getting out of here. As soon as I can save a little money, I’m shaking the dirt of this town off my feet.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t care where I go, as long as it’s a long way from here. Maybe Chicago.”
“What would you do there?”
“I got a friend in Chicago. You’re kind of a nosy parker, aren’t you?”
“Not all the time. I like you.”
She gave me a long, straight look. For a moment her mouth and eyes forgot to be hard.
“I like anybody who doesn’t like Kerch,” I went on.
“Oh,” she said.
“What does Kerch look like?”
“Why should you be so interested in him if you don’t know him?”
“He did me a bad turn once.”
“What kind of a bad turn?”
“The kind I don’t talk about. What does he look like?”
“He’s probably in the back office now. Why don’t you go and take a look for yourself?”
“Maybe I will,” I said. “But I like to know what I’m looking for.”
“Did you ever read the fairy story about the frog king? My mother used to read it to me when I was a kid. Anyway, it’s about a man that got changed by magic into a frog, and then changed back into a man. That’s the way Kerch looks, as if he didn’t change all the way back into a man.”
“I wonder why Mrs. Weather would pick a guy like that to run her night club.”
“Ask me another. He’s smart, though. He’s too goddam smart. But I don’t think that’s the reason he’s working for her.”
“Why, then?”
“If you ask me, he’s not working for her, he’s working for himself.”
“She owns this place, doesn’t she?”
“She’s supposed to. But I’ve seen her out here talking to him a few times. He doesn’t take his orders from her.”
“Did he buy it from her?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never heard that he did. The way she looks at him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something on her.”
“Such as?”
“What is this, the third degree? You ask more questions than a quiz program.”
“Maybe that’s the sixty-four-dollar question,” I said.
“I was just telling you how it looked to me. I don’t know of any special reason for her to be afraid of Kerch. Everybody’s a little bit afraid of him.”
“Are you?”
“No,” she said slowly, “I don’t think I am. I hate his guts too much to be afraid of him.”
“Why? Has he got something on you?”
“The hell he has! I’ve got something on him. He likes doing some strange things.” She was silent for a moment. “Why did you ask me if I was afraid of him? What difference does it make?”
I said in a low voice: “Because I’m going to get Kerch, and I can probably use some help.”
“You a cop?”
“Not me. That’s one reason I need help.”
“You’re biting off a big chunk of trouble if you think you’re going to get Kerch. I told you he was smart, and I told you he’s got tough boys working for him.”
“I’m working for myself,” I said, “so I put everything I’ve got into my work.”
“I don’t see how I could help you. If you’re on the up-and-up, you better go and see Allister.”
The florid man and his fading blonde had returned to the table behind me. I noticed a pause in their conversation at the word “Allister.”
“This isn’t a good place to talk,” I said. “Is there some place more private around here?”
“You can take me upstairs,” she said demurely.
chapter 8
The room to which she took me was furnished with a couple of cloth-covered chairs, a Hollywood bed with a bright silk cover, a dressing-table lit by a silk-shaded floor lamp, a washbasin in a corner behind a cheap Japanese screen. The single window was hung with a heavy drape, which seemed to cut the room off from time and space. But the sound of arriving and departing motors in the parking lot below the window sifted through the cloth like a muffled obbligato of impermanence.
She snapped the Yale lock and said uncertainly from the door: “You might as well sit down.”
I took one of the chairs, and she sat facing me on the stool in front of the dressing-table.
“I didn’t expect to be told to go to Allister,” I said. “I thought he was protecting Kerch.”
“Not Allister. He’d like to see him run out of town.”
“What’s he waiting for, then?”
“Allister isn’t a fighter the way you are—at least, the way I think you are. His hands are tied, he says.”
“Is he honest?”
“I think so,” she said after a pause. “Anyway, I know he’s Kerch’s enemy.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I know him. He’s a good friend of a friend of mine.”
“I’ll go and see what kind of a guy he is.”
&n
bsp; “He’s clever. And he knows a lot about this town. He investigated it for the Cranbridge D.A., but they killed his report.”
“Who killed it?”
“I heard it was a man called Weather. You wouldn’t know him. He used to own this place.”
“Oh.”
She turned to the mirror, picked up a brush, and began to brush her hair with quick determined strokes. It flowed sleekly around the back of her head and billowed across her shoulders in soft copper gleaming curls. Embarrassment and a deeper feeling that masqueraded as pity made me feel restless and chilly. The brush swished and crackled through her hair like a tiger moving in the undergrowth.
“You don’t live here, do you?” I said.
“God, no! I’d go crazy if I had to. I’ve got an apartment of my own.”
“Where?”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror. The hair drawn smoothly back from her brow made her forehead look very young and pure. “Don’t tell me you want to see me again?”
“I don’t like the atmosphere here.”
“Do I, though!”
“I’d like to come and see you where you live.”
“I’m usually home in the afternoon. I live in the Harvey Apartments, they’re south of Main—”
“I know where they are.”
“I thought you didn’t know this town?” She began to apply lipstick with a red-tipped little finger, stretching her mouth like a mask.
“I went there tonight to see a Mrs. Sontag.”
“How do you happen to know her? Francie’s a friend of mine.”
“I don’t. I was looking for her brother.”
She whirled on her stool. “You bastard. You are a cop.”
“Your family is allergic to cops, isn’t it? Your grandfather had practically the same reaction.”
Her small breasts rose and fell visibly with her quick breathing, and her hands were working at her sides. “You can get the hell out of here. And you can forget what I told you about where I live.”
“So many people are taking me for a cop, I’m beginning to feel insulted.”
“How do you know so much about me, then? Why did you come out here to find me?”
“But you found me. That was a coincidence. And I don’t know a damn thing about you.”
“You said you were talking to Grandfather.”
“Not about you. He just happened to mention you.”
“Who are you? What are you trying to do?”
“My father was this man Weather you said I wouldn’t know. I’m trying to find out who killed him.”
She watched my face in silence. Finally she said: “And you think it was Kerch?”
“My mind is open. What do you think?”
“I don’t know anything about it. That was a long time before I came out here.” After a moment she said shyly: “What did Grandfather say about me?”
I had to look for words. “He sounded kind of disappointed in you.”
“The old fool!” she said bitterly. “I suppose he expects me to spend my life making his meals and cleaning up that dump of his and listening to his crazy lectures. He’s screwy.”
“Now I know what you meant when you said I reminded you of your grandfather.”
A smile moved almost imperceptibly from her eyes to her mouth, but didn’t stay. “No. I just meant you both like shooting off your mouths. He’s all right, I guess. I feel sorry for him sometimes. He wanted me to get an education and be something. He’s pretty well educated himself.”
“Why did you leave him?”
“He ordered me out. He caught me with a boy in the back room.” She was still for a time. Her eyes were looking at me, but they were blind and grim, turned inward on her young past. “I was just as glad, because I didn’t want to stay anyway. He’s a pretty good old man, but he didn’t understand me at all. He had big ideas about helping people, but he never helped me. He thought I should go to normal school and be a teacher, can you imagine? He thought I was a crazy little bitch because I hated school. And then he was always writing radical letters to the newspapers, and the kids would come to school and take it out on me. I couldn’t ever tell him about that, even.”
“What happened to your mother and father?”
“I never saw my father. My mother died when I was eleven. After that Grandfather took care of me. He was nice to me when I was a kid. We used to go on picnics in the country.”
“You never saw your father?”
She moved awkwardly and clasped her hands in her lap. “I was a bastard,” she said violently. Then more softly: “I guess you think I’m taking after my mother.”
“I’m not thinking a thing,” I said. “Except that I’ve got another reason for not liking Sault.”
She looked at me suspiciously. “You said my grandfather didn’t talk about me.”
“All he said was that he thought Sault was going to marry you, and he was wrong.”
“How wrong he was! Isn’t it a scream?” She spoke with strained vivacity. “That I should fall for the pretty eyes of a dirty thug like that. Wouldn’t it’ve been swell to set up light housekeeping with that heel, so he could go the rounds of the poolrooms and drum up trade for me, and pay me off himself with a quick one every day? It makes me laugh every time I think of it.”
“I don’t see you laughing.”
“No? For a long time I couldn’t think of that crawling bastard without laughing. Now he means so little to me I can’t even get a laugh out of him.”
“He means enough to you to make you get all wound up.”
“Hell, I’m wildly crazy about him! Didn’t I make myself clear? I’d like to play marbles with those beautiful black eyes.”
“He works for Kerch, doesn’t he?”
“He did for a while. But even Kerch doesn’t trust him. He milked some of the machines. I hear he’s in business for himself now, peddling marijuana. It’s a business that’s just about low enough to suit him.”
“He used to do some shoplifting,” I said.
“Yeah, he got sent up for it. That’s where he learned most of his little tricks—in reform school.”
“With that record, I don’t suppose your grandfather wanted him around the store?”
“Grandpa’s a sucker for anybody that he thinks has missed the breaks. He kept an eye on Joey, but he didn’t try to keep him out of the store.”
“Did Sault ever steal anything from him?”
“No, not that I knew of. That’s a funny thing, isn’t it? When he started going with me, he said he was going straight. He did seem to be going straight, too. Christ, he even had me fooled!”
“Maybe he had himself fooled for a while.”
She laughed shortly. “Not Joe Sault.”
“But he never lifted anything from the store?”
“No, I guess there wasn’t anything there he wanted. Except me.”
“You make me mad,” I said. “You look like a nice girl, and you talk like an honest one. But once upon a time you let a dimwit with sideburns take advantage of you. You woke up from love’s young dream with a hangover. It could happen to anybody. It happens to more girls than you think. But what did you do? You sat back on your little tail and told yourself your life was finished—you were ruined for keeps. You knew damn well you were a romantic sap, so you set out to prove the opposite. You’d been too soft, so now you’d be too hard. You’d been tumbled once, so now you’d get yourself tumbled ten or twelve times a night. All to show yourself, and your dimwit with the sideburns, that you’re a hard girl and can take it.”
“You understand me so well,” she said ironically. “You should put all that savvy to work and get yourself a job psychoanalyzing people or whatever they call it.”
“I don’t think you’re so hard. I think I could push my finger right through your crust.”
“You’re the one that talks like a romantic softie. I suppose you read somewhere that a woman never forgets the first man she has. I wouldn’t cross the street to s
pit on Sault if he was lying in the gutter, and one of these days he probably will be.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t think you know what you meant,” she said fiercely. “I suppose you think I give a damn for the men I bring up here. They don’t mean any more to me than if they were made of wood. They can work and sweat on me, and they can’t do anything to me. I can lie under a man and think about what I’m going to have for dinner tomorrow.”
“It’s a tough way to buy your dinners.”
“Tough? It’s soft and easy. It buys me the things I want. You think I care about myself? I don’t. I admit I cared about myself the first time. After that it didn’t matter. I don’t care about myself at all. Nobody can do anything to me.”
The hysterical rush of her words made a shrill babbling in the room. Her white hands wrestled each other in her lap.
“You talk like a hard little bitch,” I said. “But you’re a worried girl, and you don’t like yourself very much.”
“I like myself fine,” she cried defiantly. “I like myself better than I like any soft-soaping preacher who goes around sticking his nose in other people’s business.” The stream of words ceased abruptly, as if a valve had been closed somewhere out of sight.
Suddenly she spread her hands over her face, ran blindly across the narrow room, and fell full length on the bed. The dry sobs that struggled up out of her chest shook her whole body. The bed creaked under her in facetious imitation of itself.
I got out of my chair and stood over her. She was lying face down across the bed, her head concealed under her scattered sheaf of hair. She was crying almost without sound now, but her body trembled convulsively. Little shivers of anguish moved rhythmically across her pale back, and her thin shoulder blades were tremulous. I felt I should cover her with something and leave her, but pity held me where I was. I was sorrier for her than I had ever been for anyone before.
Suddenly, as if a pressure had been removed from my groin, the pity turned into an overpowering hunger. I leaned across her and lifted her hair and kissed the nape of her neck. My hands burrowed under her body and found her sharp small breasts. I forgot the ugly room, the strangeness of the meeting, the dark past, and the dim future. So did she.
Her mouth was sweet. Her body was thin and desperate and sweet.
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