by Ed Lacy
One of the things I liked about Judy was that she never got sloppy drunk. But now the stuff seemed to get to her. After we had exhausted all the small talk, she sat on the edge of a big chair, staring at me, listening to some radio jazz. I was stretched out on the bed, fanning my furious-red skin. I studied the creamy white of her trim breasts against her tan, thought what a perfect body she had. My skin was so sore I would have screamed if she'd touched me. I said, “Come over here.” No.
“You were a nurse, or some damn thing; can't you do something for my burn?”
“Yes.”
She took a tube of oil from the bathroom, began spreading it on my skin. It was wonderful; the oil was cool and her fingers so gentle. Suddenly she did something to a muscle in my shoulder that sent such a sharp pain through my whole body I sat up gasping. It felt like a cramp and I punched the air a few times to get rid of the knotty feeling. My back was to her as I said, “What happened there?”
She gave out with a drunken laugh. “See, muscles, I'm good with my hands, too.”
I turned on the bed to face her. “You...? What's the idea? That hurt.”
“I know. I wanted it to hurt.”
“Why? You must be crocked to—”
“I'm very sober. You couldn't leave me alone, even down here!”
“What are you talking about? You said you wanted me to—”
“Wanted you? Bucky, you scare me crazy!” Her voice was high with hate. Her eyes made me look away.
“Scare you? Why?”
“You're a cop, that's why! A cop that shakes you down will shoot you down!”
“How can you talk like that? I never took a cent from you.”
“No? What do you call seeing me for free?”
I spun off the bed fast, my burnt knees almost making me fall. Or maybe I was sick enough to be dizzy. Judy backed away from me—seemed to shrink into a corner of the room. She moaned, “I know you're going to beat the slop out of me. Well, I don't care—it was worth saying it!”
I dressed in seconds. She was still crouched in the corner, her hands raised before her face and breasts like a helpless pug on the ropes. Opening the door, I told her, “You must be out of your living mind. You should damn well know I'd never hit you, Judy.”
The last I saw of her she had dropped her hands, her mouth slack with astonishment. All the naked tan and white skin didn't seem pretty nor exciting. It added up to an icy pile of nothing.
My luck wasn't all bad; I was able to get a plane back that night. I went home to change my clothes, oil my skin. I told Elma I'd gone south to pick up a fugitive. I spent the rest of the day walking around town, trying to understand it, my miserable burn not letting me forget things. By supper I was beat enough to get a sound night's sleep.
The next day, as Doc and I were lunching at the zoo outdoor cafeteria, I still felt crummy. Doc was in fine talking form and off on another of his favorite subjects—that a good heavyweight could flatten a gorilla. The gorillas must have had something for Doc; he spent plenty of time staring at the two they had in the zoo, seriously studying them—low-rating them. Along about the second cup of coffee Doc got around to Judy and my lobster-red face. I told him what had happened, how glad I was now that I hadn't been able to buy her a mink. Talking about it made me feel much better.
Doc said sadly, “It's a shame. The way you hit it off with her. I considered you the ideal couple, the—”
“You told me—several times: Punch and Judy. So the devil with her.”
“Seriously, Bucky, she's a—A mink!” He suddenly roared with laughter; laughed like a kid. Then, as he sailed a hunk of toast at a pigeon on the railing, he said, “So that accounts for your itchy palms recently. Bucky, you fool, don't you know all whores are frigid fakes? They never give you the real thing. Although I'll grant you Judy can certainly put on a first-rate imitation. But, son—even the real thing is never worth a mink!”
8—
I sat up with a start. Doc was bending over me, gently shaking me awake. He said, “Let's go, Bucky. It's time.”
Up close now, Doc looked awful. The stubble on his face had patches of gray-white and his breath stunk. “Okay. In a second.” I yawned and stretched out on the dirty cot again.
“I'll get the hair dye ready,” Doc said, opening the false wall and leaving the room.
I closed my eyes for a moment to blot out the light bulb, the cracked walls. Lucky Judy. Beautiful, cold Judy. If she hadn't told me off, would we still be together? Would she be dead now? It seemed she was right: A cop that shakes you down will shoot you down. Betty was dead. And Doc was so wrong—Betty was a real fine kid. Gunning Molly and the thin guy didn't matter, but Betty... Sometimes I thought we were in love. Real, storybook love. Even wondered what I was going to do about it. Well, that was sure taken care of.
Maybe I wasn't half the detective Doc was, but I knew enough not to believe in coincidences, and the whole deal with Betty seemed like a setup. Of course, I had nothing definite to go on; still, it was one of the things needling the back of my brain.
I opened my eyes and glanced at the suitcases. Three bags and three dead people. The new arithmetic: How many corpses equal a million bucks?
I heard Doc returning and watched him through almost-closed eyes. He stopped a foot or two away from my cot, holding a pot of something in his hand, and a big wad of cotton. He grinned, then shook his head, touched my shoulder. “Get up, Bucky boy. We'll have plenty of time for sleep.”
I sat up, poked a finger in his lean gut as I yawned again to cover my nervousness. “Sure, I know; an army can't fight on an empty stomach. Who said that, Doc?”
“Who cares? Let's get working on your hair first,” Doc said, putting the pot on the chair and taking my razor from his pocket. “Bucky the blond. I imagine Betty would be real frantic for you as a blond.”
“Would she?” I asked, seeing her dead eyes starting up at me again. How easily I could remember when those same cold eyes had been soft with pleasure every time I walked into the apartment. Had I let her down? I don't know, it wasn't the money: I hadn't known about taking the money then or... I jumped to my feet. “Let's get on with this.”
Doc knew make-up. He thinned my hair and then dyed it a dirty mild-blond, did the same for my eyebrows. It took more time than we thought as Doc had to rinse and rerinse my hair. I suggested we make a mustache with the cut hair but he claimed it would look phony. He fattened my nose by shoving cotton up each nostril; I had to breathe through my mouth. Then I had a blanket wrapped around my middle, and under that a better kind of padding—a homemade money belt with five thousand.
Doc was right again, as usual. Once I had on my clown suit—as we called the worn work clothes—I sure looked like a fat blond slob who thought he was the height of sartorial perfection in a windbreaker. It could have been my imagination, but the clothes were itchy at first. Or my skin could have been crawling with fear.
Doc didn't overlook a thing; he even roughed up my good shoes—until he rummaged in the cellar and came up with an old pair of sneakers that were a little large for me but workable. I sure looked as though I'd been wearing the clothes for the last year. He wanted me to leave my gun behind but I flatly refused. I stuck it in the folds of the blanket around my stomach where I could reach it easily. After Doc told me over and over not to attempt talking funny or different, and not to buy too much in one store, I started out.
It was a dark, cold night, but the sweat was pouring off me as I walked the first hundred yards—expecting shots and shouts of recognition. I was about to turn back and tell Doc it was too late for any shops to be open, when a couple passed. They didn't even glance my way. By the time I reached the corner street light, I was feeling okay, my walk steady. I put my dirty cap at a cocky angle and stepped out. I dropped into a delicatessen two blocks away and calmly purchased a few sandwiches, several cans of beer and two packs of butts. Crossing the street to a candy store, I bought a paper and more cigarettes.
I was
flying so high I nearly nose-dived. Stopping in a dingy grocery on the way “home,” I'd bought a pound of coffee, bread, a couple of cans of milk, jam, and a dozen eggs—when I saw two dusty cans of crab meat on the shelf. This wasn't a crab-meat neighborhood and the cans must have been there for months. But Doc liked the junk, so I put them on the counter. The stoop-shouldered jerk behind the counter dusted off the cans with his apron. Running his damp eyes over my clothes, he grunted, “You got that much money?”
I wanted to clip him but instead I mumbled, “How much is it?”
Wetting a pencil on his tongue, he wrote some queer figures on a bag, announced, “Three dollars and eighty-nine cents.”
I went through the routine of fingering the money in my pocket, finally pulled out a five-dollar bill. I told him, “Add two cakes of soap and a box of them crackers—might as well kill the five-spot. A guy is paid and the dough goes before he can make it home these days.” And I knew I was talking too damn much. Would getting rid of his old cans of crab meat make him talk? But I was stuck with them now. And what could he say?
I rushed back to the house, greatly relieved when I saw the suitcases and Doc still there. After I pulled the cotton from my nose, took off the clown suit, we went into the kitchen and packed in a big meal. Doc was something: When I showed him the crab meat all he said was, “From Japan. Doesn't have the body of our domestic crab meat.”
After we stuffed ourselves, Doc puffed on a cigarette as he told me, “Next time you're out, remember to buy a can of lighter fuel for me. Also some fruit. You should be able to find frozen juice. And frozen strawberries. That's what I want, strawberries. With decent ice cream.”
“Perhaps you'd like me to run up to the zoo and get a container of coffee? I brought enough food for two days. How many more of these shopping trips do you plan on my taking?”
“Now, son, one must relax to digest food properly. I am feeling quite full and contented. Let's not go into that all over again. Makes for a sluggish indigestion. We have to see the way the breaks fall. Look, we're practically buried in the newspaper—a few lines on the sixth page. That's a good sign.”
Doc started for our room. I asked, “What about the dishes?”
“Leave them. Might keep the roaches out of our room.”
“I'll wash them. We have! to eat here tomorrow,” I said, thoughtfully. This sudden sloppiness of Doc's was making me very jumpy.
After I did the dishes I went to the bathroom and took a shower, washed out my socks and underwear—although after using the towel I was probably dirtier than when I started. I'd have to look through Molly's things for towels, if she had any. The water was hot—I'd been surprised to see (and turn on) a neat electric water heater in the cellar. But when would the man be around to read the meters?
When I shut the “door” to our room, I hung my stuff on the back of the chair. Doc looked up from his newspaper, gave me an amused glance. “Taking in washing, kid?”
“If I did, you'd be the first thing needing washing.”
“I don't like to take my things off. Never know when we may have to lam out of here on a second's notice.”
Lam where? I asked myself.
Doc yawned. “Let me finish the paper and get some more sack time.”
“Big night. I should have brought in a bottle.”
“No hard liquor here.” Doc thumbed toward the bags. “That's our big night, Bucky. Relax. Man is certainly an odd creature. We work and sweat for some leisure time, yet if all man has is free time, he becomes restless.”
“I wish we at least had a radio.” I was in no mood for one of Doc's after-dinner speeches.
“How did men on the lam before the TV era kill time? Too bad I never taught you how to play chess, Bucky. We could pass the time in intellectual stimulation.”
“I wish we had a radio,” I repeated. Maybe it wasn't funny, but it sent me off laughing and even Doc shook his head in mock sadness, gave me a tight grin as he said, “You're all brawn—thank God.”
Doc read the paper while I lay on my cot, smoking a butt slowly. It wouldn't be so bad cooped up this way with Betty. Right now I wanted her with me. She may not have been the brightest gal or the most beautiful, but she was the most agreeable person I ever met, never said no to anything I wanted to do. It was a shame she wasn't along to enjoy the dough. I'd be willing to cut her in for a third. And having her here... But that was a dumb idea; it would be that much harder getting away with her along.
Anyway, she was dead.
Poor Betty. Why, it wasn't more than three or four months ago when we first picked her up.
9—Betty
Doc and I had a good week. Some months before, we had bagged a nineteen-year-old kid in the act of stealing a car. He was wine-high at the time and it was a routine arrest. Shortly before the case came to trial, the boy's old man offered us five hundred dollars to make a few “slight” mistakes in the time; whether we saw the car on the uptown or downtown side of the street, or what the kid was wearing, and so on, in our testimony. It was the boy's first offense and it figured that if we sounded a bit confused—but not enough to look like fools—the kid might get off. The boy came from a middle-class W.P.A. family, as Doc sarcastically called them: white, Protestant, a hundred percent American.
I was against taking the money. It seemed to me an open-and-shut case against the kid. And if he had been able to drive away, in his condition he might have killed a lot of people. But the poppa talked to Doc—not to me—and Doc put his hand out for both of us. On the stand we told a straight story, a tight story, and poppa looked like he wanted to kill us as sonny boy got a year.
As he slipped me my half, Doc said, “Don't act like a child taking castor oil. We did the right thing, Bucky. He's a snotty kid and guilty. Why should he get off because his folks are rich enough to grease the police? Seriously, this was true law enforcement; we taught them never to try bribing a police officer again. And what the hell, they're in no position to kick about a thing.”
We dropped into a bar we liked for a couple of free belts, a kind of celebration. The fat barkeep whispered, “Glad to see you guys. Doc, you see that broad over there in the booth? The skinny one. I don't know if she's crazy or what, but she's openly soliciting. And she don't even know how to do it. I threw her fanny out once before today, and here she is back. Get her out of here before I lose my license.”
Betty didn't look like much then: pale; scrawny figure; her clothes tacky. But she was young, about twenty. When Doc and I sat down in the booth, flashed our buzzers, she began to cry. The barkeep hit his head with his hands—the last thing he wanted was a scene. So we walked-rushed her out to the squad car. She gave us the usual song and dance about being down on her luck, hungry. Then she looked at me and said, “I don't care if I do go to jail; at least I'll eat. All I've had since yesterday is a box of crackers.”
“Hustling been that bad?” Doc asked, as if it was all a joke.
She said hysterically, “I always thought this... this last resort... would be simple. It isn't. I've made four dollars in five days, I'm scared crazy. I was locked out of my room this morning and... I'm so hungry I could...”
“Sister, you're spinning an old record,” Doc told her.
I felt sorry for her. Perhaps that was the key to all my feelings toward Betty: I was sorry for her. She didn't have a thing except her youth. Her face wasn't pretty, sort of rough-featured, like her nose had been stuck on. But as Doc once told me, humor is based on cruelty—so maybe love is based on pity. I told her, “Okay, stop the tears. I'll blow you to a good meal.” I looked at Doc. “We can let her go. We haven't anything on her except being a vag.”
A radio car cruised by with a police captain—probably the local precinct captain making his wrap-up for the day. I thought he recognized us.
Doc said, “Start the car, Bucky. This isn't the place to talk. Go to Mario's; we'll put some good heavy spaghetti next to the young lady's ribs while we chat. What's your name, honey?”
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“Betty. Betty James,” she said suspiciously, although when she looked at me her eyes were grateful.
We had a neat meal. Doc was in high, ordering a lot of fancy dishes like clams smothered in various kinds of melted cheese, and white and red wine. It made me think of Nate.
Betty ate like a pig. The food loosened her up a little, but there was still this sullen, suspicious look that said she didn't trust cops, was still scared stiff. I don't know why, but that got me excited.
When we had plowed through some rich Italian pastry and were sipping coffee espresso, Doc puffed on a cigarette as he told her, “Listen to me closely, Betty James. I'm going to make a suggestion. You want to buy it, fine. You turn it down, that's okay, too. Whatever you decide has to be of your own free will. Now, we're not going to arrest you. If you like, walk out of here this minute, and I hope we'll never see you again. You want to do that?”