I pulled up behind, and Jake got out to come back to my car. He was wearing a terry-cloth jacket above, and only swimming-trunks and sandals below. His legs looked like sticks, the knees bulging because of the thinness on both sides of them.
“I think I got a boat race lined up, Pete,” he said. “I’m not sure about it yet, but when I am, I’ll call you. Cash deal, though, Pete. I’m not booking it myself.”
“At Hollywood Park?” I asked him.
“Not there. You’ll have to look harder than I have to find one there.” He took a breath. “How’d you come out down at the station?”
“I don’t know. Here I sit.”
“Hovde on it, isn’t he?”
I nodded.
“He’s a bulldog, Pete. He’s tough and smart and a worker. Don’t be fooled by his looks. And he can’t be bought, either.”
I said nothing.
Jake ran a finger along the top of my door. “It just doesn’t figure. None of it figures. Nick’s going nuts on it. Jaekels had him in this morning; did you know that?”
“No.”
“You know him, Deputy D.A.? He’s out to get Nick, and he’s going to stay with it. Well, Vicki’s probably chomping at the bit. I’ll call you, Pete.”
A boat race meant a fixed race and why would Jake Schuster cut me in on a pie like that? I watched his thin legs disappear into the Caddy, and then the Caddy snorted off in her lordly way.
They were all trying to help me, Nick’s friends. Jake and Mike and even Nick’s new friend, Ellen. It didn’t seem logical they were doing it out of their inherent generosity. Except for Ellen.
I went along the drive, just loafing, about thirty, in the middle lane, while traffic went wooshing by on both sides. The day was fine; there was too much traffic.
At Sunset, where Sunset ends, I turned up and took that for about a quarter mile. And here was a road leading off to the left that I know, a twisting road leading up into the hills beyond the Palisades, the Santa Monica Range.
Up and up and up, turning and twisting, the view of the coast line stretching with each higher glimpse, until I was as high as the good part of the road went.
There’s a tired gag, “on a clear day, you can see Catalina,” and it was visible today. And so was the whole sweep of shore line from Palos Verdes beyond Malibu. The sunlight making the quiet water shimmer, the traffic like beetles on the highway.
It is not all neon and searchlights and cults and barbecues and ritualistic cemeteries and Hedda Hopper, this town of my birth. There isn’t really a damned thing wrong with it except the people who inhabit it. And very few of them are natives.
I guess if Sandburg can see some good in Chicago, that dismal, prairie whistle stop, some equally articulate major leaguer will some day go to bat for my town. It won’t be one of the cuties, one of the needle-point workers with lace spats, who’s afraid to write beyond his clique. It will need a man not lulled by the opium of his own cleverness.
Could I work for Nick Arnold? A millionaire and more, Nick must be; the future would be secure enough. But how frightened he was, currently, because there seemed to be a leak in the organization. The empire could topple if somebody talked. How secure was that kind of future? Assuming I could overlook the ethical angles, how was it from the economic?
That didn’t seem important; the ethical was the big decision, and it seemed strange to me that a boozy quiff hound like Pete Worden could hesitate over an ethical decision. If Nick didn’t have it, what in hell was my price?
This thinking’s a tough racket when you haven’t got the equipment. The low-brows can feel and the highbrows can parrot, but the middle-brow has to make his own decisions.
I still hadn’t made mine when I drove back to Sunset. Followed by Mr. Saroyan’s tiger.
Back to the Worden rattrap, and trying to nap, trying to read, trying to forget the past two days. The upholstered chair seemed to dominate the room, a new symbol to add to the other three.
So the man was nothing, a brown-eyed rodent out of the city’s sewers. But the man was dead, and that’s important to society, and the reason for his death should be. Men like Al Calvano had always existed, but not at the current level.
I showered. And shaved for the second time that day, and brought out the tails and the stiff shirt, the white tie, the forty-dollar shoes. Mementos of a happier time, more formal and secure.
That Ellen. In the boudoir, on the beach, or in front of a book she does all right. This dry evening, she looked divine.
The hair high again, the dress black. The shoulders bare, her chief charms only suggesting an emergence, her smile warm.
“My,” she said. “You look like—like Boston.”
“You don’t look like Eau Claire,” I said. “How was the afternoon?”
“So-so. And yours?”
“Lonely.” I reached for her, but she moved back.
“You’ll mess me, tailback. I want to look pretty.” Her voice had some tremor. “Drink?” I shook my head.
She smiled. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you turn down a drink. What did you do this afternoon?”
“Tried to think. I’m not very good at it. Let’s go.”
The dry wind blowing from the desert and the Merc talking to herself, and neither of us voluble.
The big house and the lights on again, but the parking-area almost deserted this evening, holding one car.
Nick stood on the front porch talking to a man as we came up the steps. The man was leaving, and he turned to come down as we came up.
Big man, the Scandinavian cop with the high cheekbones, Sergeant Hovde. He looked at me and at Ellen.
“The upper classes,” he said. “I’ll want to see you in the morning, Worden. Don’t go any place.”
“I’ll be home,” I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE LITERARY MONSTER was no writer, but a critic, a local critic and a teacher of the significant story, a round, short man with a beard and shiny, small brown eyes.
He wore a dinner jacket and black tie and looked at me as though I’d trumped his ace when we were introduced.
For Ellen he had more warmth.
Nick said, “Professor Arranbee has been kind enough to accept Paul as one of his students. He believes Paul has a lot of talent.”
Kind enough to accept Paul. What kind of talk is this, Nicholas Arapopulus?
Then Paul was there, and Chris. Paul looking like Dracula in a rented suit, Chris looking like a lodge-bound Elk.
Nick sat at one end of the table and Ellen at the other. At Ellen’s end, Paul and the Professor faced each other; at Nick’s end, I looked at Chris. That I can stand.
At Ellen’s end the talk was sharp and knowing; at this end we discussed S.C.
They’d had a bad season, my alma mater, and the wolves were beginning to howl. Howard Jones had put the Trojans up there, and what would he do if he were alive today?
“I don’t know,” I said. “Minnesota didn’t have such a hot year, maybe the worst in their history. And Bierman’s still alive.”
“I think it’s a leveling off,” Chris said. “I think the giants are on the way out.”
At the bright end they were discussing Eliot, T.S. At our end we wondered if Detroit could beat the Bears to avert the play-off with the Rams.
“Those Bears,” Chris said. “They’ve got the Rams’ number. They surely haven’t got the boys the Rams have.”
At the other end somebody mentioned Saroyan, and I cocked an ear. The Professor said, “Being a private, first class is what killed him, I suppose. He certainly hasn’t been heard from since.”
Ellen said brightly, “Perhaps Pete would like to contribute something here. Pete’s a Saroyan fan.”
I looked up the table toward her. My lace curtain Irish tonight. I said, “What would you like to know?”
“We’d like to know why Mr. Saroyan is so silent these days?”
“He’s not like other writers,” I said. “He
doesn’t write unless he has something to say.”
The three of them smiled patronizingly and went back to their level.
What was she trying to do, get me in solid with the new boss?
“Thirty unhappy years from prudery to degradation,” the Professor was handing down. “Fitzgerald was the spokesman for the twenties, but who were the voices of the following decades?”
From our abysmal end Nick got into the act. “The twenties weren’t unhappy. That was a happy time, believe me. I was there.”
The Professor cocked an eye. “Mr. Fitzgerald didn’t seem to think so.”
“Don’t know him,” Nick said.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald,” his son informed him, his son Paul.
And now Chris entered the fray. “Oh, him. I read him.”
Paul smiled. “Did you really? And could we have your opinion?”
Chris’s chin was out and he looked at his brother as though he were the first-string guard. “I’d say he was crying in his beer. He didn’t live long enough to see some real trouble. Lost generation—How about Pete’s generation?”
“How about mine?” Nick said. “I was lucky.”
“You were tough, Pop,” Chris said. “You knew how to fight.”
“And prohibition helped, of course,” Paul said.
“Well,” Ellen said, “I must say this is spirited, if not enlightening.”
She said it fast, but not fast enough to cover the effect of Paul’s words. Nick was blushing again.
“Maybe,” I said, “we low-brows had better stick to football.”
“Or business,” Nick said. “Did Ellen tell you, Pete?”
“She told me,” I said. “I want some time, Nick, on it. I can’t seem to make up my mind.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Nick said. “There are men with better names and worse records, Pete.”
“I know,” I said. “I know, Nick. I’m thinking about it, and seriously.”
They were taking care of Hemingway, upstairs. They decided he was all right before he started to beat his chest, before he fancied himself as a combination of Hanson Baldwin and Tarzan. They agreed on that and would send it down to the lower echelons.
Chris winked at me and looked up toward the other end. “Professor Arranbee, there’s a question that’s been bothering me for some time.”
“Yes?” The Professor put his chin up and smiled, waiting.
“Do you think the Bears will beat Detroit?”
Professor Arranbee’s smile congealed on his face. Ellen studied her water glass and Paul frowned. I hung onto my chair.
“I—uh—” The Professor shrugged.
It was seconds before they got back to the lighter air, to Kafka and Gide and Roney Scott.
They were still talking when the meal was finished and we went into the living-room.
“You play table tennis?” Chris asked me.
“Not for some time. Give me three points and we’ll make it two bits a game.”
“Three ways,” Nick said. “Winner stands up.”
Money in the bank, I figured. Hadn’t I been the hot-shot of the local USO before they shipped us to more important battles? Money in the bank.
I figured wrong. That Chris. All the shots he had, spin and drive, chop and blast, backhand, forehand any old hand, driving us long and sucking us short, catching us flat-footed and with both feet in the same shoe at times. What asses he made of us, while the quarters rained down on him.
We had our coats off now. We had sweat running down our backs and sides and necks. It got to be an obsession, putting that stocky master down. We should live so long.
As the man said, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again—and then stop making a damned fool of yourself.
“That’s enough for me,” Nick said finally, and I agreed.
Chris grinned at us. “You wouldn’t want me to be third string at everything, would you?”
Then the three civilized members of the party were standing in the doorway. We must have been something to behold, bedraggled and sweaty.
Ellen had her brick house Irish look. “What in heaven has been going on in here?”
I tried to think of an answer with deep social significance, but all I could manage was, “We’ve been having fun.”
Illegal, it must be, the way the three of them looked. Nick said, “I’ve been a poor host, I’m afraid. But—” It probably didn’t occur to him that they’d been poor guests.
I said, “Well, I’ve got to be running along, Nick. I’ll let you know about the—the job.”
“It’s early,” Ellen said.
I was putting on my coat, and I didn’t look at her. “Is it? You can stay, if you want.”
Paul Arnold said, “I’d be glad to drop you off, Ellen, when Chris and I take Professor Arranbee home.” And looked at me. “If Mr. Worden wouldn’t mind?”
“She’s all yours,” I said, not looking at her.
She said, “Are you annoyed about something?”
Now I looked at her and shook my head, and managed a smile. I said to Arranbee, “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Professor,” and shook his damp hand.
Chris said, “You play golf, too, Pete?”
“A little,” I said. “Six is my handicap.”
“We’ll have to get together sometime,” he said. “We don’t belong to a club, but maybe Fox Hills?”
“Any time you’re free,” I told him. He and Nick and I were walking to the door now.
My girl had stayed in the game room, proud and miffed. I didn’t blame her, but there’d been too many sneers today; I wanted to be alone where I could sulk.
I said good night to Nick and Chris and walked out to the parking-area. I stood there for a moment, admiring the clarity of the night’s stars, and then climbed into the Merc and turned on the radio.
Kid stuff, emotional adolescence. Don’t cry, tailback; that would be too much. The Merc coughed into life and the radio gave with Goodman. The seat next to me looked suddenly deserted, but I didn’t want her there. She puts on too many airs when she’s vertical.
It was still dry and unusually warm for this town at night. There wasn’t anything to do at home and no reason to go there, but I went. I, hadn’t had a drink all day and wanted none. Was I settling down?
At home I took a shower and put on a robe over my nothingness. I went next door to knock at Tommy Lister’s cave, but there was no response.
I came back and tried to get into Maugham, into Marquand, into Irwin Shaw. They had no hooks for me tonight.
All right, sign up with Nick. He’s killed and stolen and bought and sold but you’re more like him than you are like your own brother. He’s more your kind of people than the people you went to school with, grew up with—and broke with.
You haven’t any friends, Pete Worden, get wise to yourself. Acquaintances, yes, but no friends. They’re either too smug or too smart or too smelly.
I thought of Tommy Lister, who wrote in one world and read in another. He was a sort of friend to me, but was I to him? When his ego’s hitting on all eight, he’s a man you want to hit. When things were rough for him, and they so often were, he’s a stimulating man to be with.
So put him down as one near-friend, and where’s another? Martha understood me, but not like she used to, and I had difficulty at times understanding her.
And Ellen? Let us not think of Ellen tonight.
I decided to go to work for Nick. Nick was no worse than a lot of men they were pinning medals on, and he would pay big money.
Around two I fell asleep.
At eight I was awake and it was another gray day, with early-morning fog which might clear by noon.
The Times informed me that the navy was standing by to haul the lads who might break out of the trap in Korea. Mr. Truman was annoyed with a music critic, and told him so on White House stationery. Mr. Pegler was quoted as saying, “Let us pray.” To whom, Mr. Pegler, the NAM? Or one of our own gods?
&
nbsp; Monart Films was scripting another story of the Elder family because the first five had all made money. The fifth of seven articles trying to explain the Trojans’ dismal season was as unsatisfactory as the first four had been.
I was on my third cup of coffee when my doorbell rang. It was Sergeant Hovde. He looked weary and old.
“I made extra coffee,” I said. “How about a cup? Sit down, Sergeant, and take off your shoes.”
“I’ll sit down,” he said. “I’ll have some coffee.”
“And a couple eggs?”
He sat down at the table. “No, thanks. Friendly this morning, aren’t you?”
“I always am,” I told him. “People keep pushing me around. Isn’t it all right if I push back?”
“You’re breaking my heart,” he said. “I guess you’re clear, Worden. Calvano must have died just about the time you were giving Triangle Loan a bad time.” He paused. “You and Mike Kersh.”
“Glad to hear my alibi is sound.” I was heating the coffee and standing in front of the stove, my back to him.
“It’s a dumb move, admitting it,” Hovde went on, “because it kind of takes the heat off of you. But I figured you’re a lad who can’t be broken down by pressure.”
I said nothing.
“And you haven’t any loyalties, so that’s working barren ground. You’re a pretty hard man to get to, Worden.”
I poured him a cup of coffee, and another cup for myself. I sat down and looked at him. “What can I tell you, Sergeant?”
“Whatever will help.”
“You spoke of loyalty. I’ve decided to go to work for Nick Arnold.”
He looked at me a long time. “I’ve got a boy thirteen, Worden. He’ll be interested in hearing that. He’s got your picture up on the wall in his room. You and Lujack and Waterfield—”
“He’s got me in the wrong company,” I said. “I was never that good.”
“The kid thinks so. I suppose you think this is horse shit, huh? Maybe some more cop talk?”
“I believe you, Sergeant. And I’m not working for Nick yet. But what can I tell you? I hit Calvano; for a second, when his head hit the floor, I thought I might have killed him. I didn’t. Somebody else did that, and I can’t see he’s any loss.”
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