by P. N. Elrod
Gently bleeding into one of my handkerchiefs throughout the ride, Malone muttered directions, and about half an hour later I set the brake in front of a two-story clapboard on a narrow street lined with similar structures. It housed eight cheap flats to judge by the number of mail slots. Not the Ritz or a fleabag, but somewhere in between on the lower end of things.
“You sure you don’t want a doctor?” I asked. “I know a good one who won’t ask questions.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said in a near whisper, looking anything but well. “I’m very much in your debt, Mister—”
“Fleming. Forget it.”
Before he could insist on trying to do it for himself, I went around to the passenger side and helped him out. No protesting this time. I got him up the steps and inside, then more steps to the next floor. This tired him; he was panting and white by the time we reached the upper landing.
His flat was in the back. The building was old, worn, with creaking wood and faded wallpaper saturated with the smell of decades of boiled cabbage and fish. He shuffled to his door and unlocked it, found the light switch. The kitchen was right there as you walked in. It was clean, but matched the rest of the joint for general shabbiness. He dragged himself over to a battered table; I pulled a chair for him to sit. In his case it was more of a collapse.
I opened the top door of his icebox, found an ice pick in the draining tray, and chipped some pieces off the block. There was a dish towel by the sink. I wrapped it around the melting shards and gave it to him.
“Try this over your eye and that lip,” I suggested.
He did so, bowing over the table. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? A couple of assholes knocking you around just for fun?”
He made no reply.
“Not the first time for you, is it?”
By degrees, he managed to look up at me. The forty-watt overhead didn’t improve his face. Right now he was less clean and more cut. The expression in his brown eyes made me think of a beaten dog, pleading for the punishment to stop, just for a little while. “You know?”
“It’s been explained to me.”
“And you still helped?”
“Your life’s your business, not mine, but I don’t like bullies much.”
“You are an exceptional man, then.”
“Sometimes. You got anything to drink here?”
“I’m afraid not.”
A bartender who didn’t drink. What next? “Too bad, you need it. What about aspirin?”
“That cupboard.” He gestured, and I searched. I made him take four tablets with a lot of water. It was even odds if he could keep them down after all those gut punches, but maybe enough would get into his blood to take the sting out of the worst of them.
“What about food?” I asked.
“I’m not hungry, but if you want something—”
“I’m fine, thanks.” I allowed myself a quick look around. A wide archway led to a living area with three open doors in the opposite wall leading to a bath and two bedrooms. That seemed to be the whole flat. As with the kitchen, the place was well kept, with no trash or stray laundry on the floor. A tidy man, suddenly violated by brutal chaos. “Did those two guys have a long grudge on you?”
“They’re new at the club. The others there, they never bothered much with me, just ignored me. The new ones, though… it’s been building for the last few weeks. A lot of little things. I couldn’t exactly complain to the boss about them.”
“I guess not.”
“No one seems to understand, this is not something I’ve chosen. It’s just the way things are. Who would want to choose my sort of life?” He started to say more, then seemed to realize he might have said too much to a near stranger. “I’m sorry, I don’t wish to burden you.”
“Sometimes you gotta talk to somebody. I know what it’s like.”
“But you’re not—”
“No, but I know what it’s like.” Right after my death and change I’d needed to talk to someone. If it hadn’t been for Escott just simply sitting and listening, I’d have gone bug-eyed nuts. He didn’t have to understand one word of what I was throwing at him, or offer advice; all he did was listen, and that was enough.
“I suppose you do, in a way,” Malone admitted. He started to stand, then thought better of it.
“You got a tub? Hot water should help.”
“Quite the doctor, aren’t you?”
“I’ve had some knocks. You learn what to do about them.”
While he hunched over with the ice and let the aspirin go to work I went to the tiny bathroom and started filling the tub, dropping in half a box of Epsom salts I found in a cupboard. On the way back through the living area I noticed he had a lot of serious-looking books on his shelves. They had the overweight look of college texts. The subjects were accounting and business and a couple on psychology. The latter made me think that perhaps he’d been seeking an answer to his situation. Or maybe a solution. Sometimes there just isn’t one.
On a low table were some comic books and in one corner of the floor by the radio someone had set up an elaborate toy fort made of glued-together bits of cardboard. It was very detailed, with roofs that lifted off and working doors with tape hinges; there was even a stable, a watering trough, and a well in the middle. Wooden cowboys, Indians, and horses were scattered around it. Incongruously next to it was a homemade model of the Empire State Building standing about two feet tall. This time the cardboard had been painted gray, with tiny black rectangles marking its many windows. Someone who had seen King Kong had placed a small wooden monkey on the eighty-sixth-floor observation deck.
“You got a kid?” I asked, returning.
Malone’s expression lifted and softened. He couldn’t quite do that nervous tic smile because of his split lip, but came close. “Yes. Norrie. She stays with my neighbor while I’m at work. Oh, God, how do I explain this to her?”
“Get cleaned up first.”
“You don’t understand, she’s—” Malone shut himself down again.
“She’s what?”
“It’s complicated,” he finished, rather lamely. “She’s had upsets like this before.”
“And you think your face will scare her?”
He nodded.
“Kids are tough, given the chance. Wash off the blood, don’t make a big thing of it, and just go on. If she asks a question, answer plain and keep it short. If you show you’re not upset by what’s happened, then she won’t have anything to react to.”
“You have children?”
“No, but it just makes sense.”
He digested this while I went to turn off the tub water.
“I may have gotten it too hot,” I warned him, coming back.
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
“You need some help?”
“I can walk. Only not very fast.” He levered himself up, moving by slow considered stages, pausing at the archway between the kitchen and living room. “I’ve no right to ask you, you’ve done so much already.”
“What do you need?”
“I—I was wondering if you’d mind staying until I was finished. Those men. I’m afraid that they might know where I live.”
Chances were they wouldn’t be in any shape to come after him, and given a choice would be far more interested in me. Malone had been badly shaken, though. His fears were quite real to him. If it’d been me in his place, I’d have wanted some company, too. “No problem. Take your time. I’m a real nighthawk.”
He looked pathetically relieved. “Thank you, Mr. Fleming.” He finished shuffling to the bath and shut himself in.
I flipped through the comic books, speculating about his family situation. I could imagine when Malone was a very young man he’d tried to cure himself by getting married, then when things didn’t work out, the split came, and it had probably been ugly. Usually any children went with the mother, though. That had happened to a man I’d worked with on the paper back in New York. The office
gossip had been poisonous. He got fired, then jumped off a roof that same afternoon, the poor bastard.
I hoped Malone wouldn’t be similarly tempted after this setback. He didn’t seem the type, but you can’t always tell.
There was no reason to expect trouble, but I caught a faint noise in the hall. Someone tried the knob, then softly tapped on the door. Out of habit, I’d locked up. More curious than on guard, I opened it. A sleepy-eyed dark-haired kid of about ten or twelve stood barefooted looking up at me. She was enough like Malone for me to figure out her identity. She wore wrinkled pajamas and clutched a well-worn teddy bear. She seemed too old for such a toy, but there was a fragile air about her, a vulnerability that made me wonder if she’d been sick.
“Who’re you?” she asked, without fear.
“A friend of your dad’s. He needed a ride home from work.”
“Oh. Where is he?”
“Taking a bath. I’m Mr. Fleming. Are you Norrie?”
“Uh-huh.” She stepped into the kitchen and slipped up onto a chair. She looked at the soggy, bloodied dishcloth left on the table. “Did Daddy get into a fight?”
“Yeah. He’s all right, though.” I got the cloth to the sink and rinsed it off.
“You sure? Once someone broke his nose.”
“Not this time. He’s mostly worried about upsetting you.”
“He worries a lot.” With a dramatic sigh, she flopped the teddy bear facedown on the table.
“He said you stay with the neighbor while he’s at work.”
“Mrs. Tanenbaum.”
“She might worry, too, if she finds you gone.”
“She knows I always come here. I heard him talking and woke up. It was too early for him to be home, so I thought something was wrong.”
“You thought right, but it’s not too bad. He’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Who are you? Are you a gangster? There’s lots of them where he works, you know.”
“Afraid not. Just a Good Samaritan.”
“Oh.” It seemed to disappoint her. “Can I have a glass of water?”
I got her water. “That’s quite a fort you’ve got in there.”
“Yeah, I made it an’ the other building. Well, Daddy helped. He cut the stuff out for me, but I drew it out.”
“So you want to be a cowgirl when you grow up?”
“No, an architect.”
That brought me up short. At Norrie’s tender age I wouldn’t have been able to make even a close guess on the definition of the word. “Sounds pretty ambitious.”
“I’m really good at drawing. Wanna see? I gotta real por’folio.”
“Sure.”
She toddled off to one of the bedrooms, returning with two big sheets of cardboard held together by a taped hinge and tied at the other three edges by strings. With great dignity, she placed it on the table and solemnly undid the ties, opening it out. I grabbed the stuffed bear and moved the water glass out of the way in time to keep it from being knocked over. Inside the makeshift portfolio was a stack of drawings in pencil, crayon, and ink.
“This is our house,” she explained of the top one, which was on graph paper. “See, I’ve got it to scale. Every quarter inch equals a foot, so if it was real size it’d be as big as this building. Daddy showed me how to measure with a yardstick. And here’s what the insides look like. See how the rooms here are like ours but turned around. It’s Mrs. Tanenbaum’s place where I stay, and that’s how I know that it’s all backwards from our place.”
One by one, she flipped through them, her enthusiasm waking her up. She explained pictures of her house, school, and other buildings; even the Chicago Aquarium had been captured by her with some fair accuracy.
“I copied it from a postcard,” she confessed. “But Daddy says it’s good practice.”
“This is really impressive.” I wasn’t just blowing hot air. The kid had a talent way beyond her years. “It’s great your daddy encourages you so much.”
“We visit the library a lot.” Norrie shut her portfolio and carefully tied the strings. “He says I should go to college.”
“I’d recommend it.”
“But I know a whole lot already.”
“Then you’ll be way ahead of everyone when you get there.”
“Maybe they’ll think I’m a genius or something.”
“Maybe. Just don’t tell them you are or—” I shut myself off.
Norrie’s plaintive dark eyes went right through me. “Or they might beat me up like Daddy?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s just more polite to let other people figure out for themselves that you’re smart.”
“Why does Daddy get into fights?”
“People can be really stupid. Sometimes stupid people hit others for no reason. Like school bullies.”
“You talk like him.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I guess. He knows a lot. He went to college.”
You can’t learn everything in the halls of higher learning, but it was interesting that Malone had been there. There was no sign of a sheepskin displayed on his walls, though. I wondered what had interrupted his education and kept him in bartending. Probably life.
Norrie talked about how she wanted to build the biggest skyscraper ever, waving her arms high. As she raised her chin toward the ceiling I noticed the pale line of an old scar along the base of her jaw, running with uneven breaks from ear to ear. It didn’t seem like the kind you got when the docs remove a goiter. It looked chillingly like someone had used the poor kid for throat-cutting practice. Maybe this was what Malone had meant about things being complicated, and I wondered what history was behind the long-healed damage.
The bathroom door creaked open, and Malone reappeared, wrapped in a long, faded blue robe. His face was clean, but an iodine-stained mess, the bruising getting a real foothold, his eye colorful and swollen fully shut now. Norrie ran over to him, clutching him tight around the waist in greeting.
“Daddy! I been showing Mr. Fleming my por’folio. He likes my drawings.”
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said calmly. He visibly winced from being hugged, but didn’t let on about it to the kid.
“You gotta swell black eye.”
Malone glanced at me. I gave him a quick thumbs-up sign so he’d know all was well. “Yes, isn’t it. I see we woke you.”
“I always hear when you come home. You got in a big fight, huh? Did you beat ‘em?”
“No, it was—it was Mr. Fleming’s turn this time, then he gave me a ride home.”
“He said he wasn’t a gangster, but he’s got on their kinda clothes.”
“Ah—” Malone flashed a horrified look my way.
I held my hands out, grinning at his reaction. “Not me, I’m just trying to open a club. Norrie, just how is it you know what gangsters wear?”
“I seen ‘em in the movies. Mrs. Tanenbaum takes me. They all got suits like yours.”
“Maybe I better find another tailor, then.”
“Maybe Mrs. Tanenbaum should take you to some other kinds of movies,” Malone added. “It’s very late, young lady. Off to bed with you.”
“But I wanna hear about the fight.”
“Tomorrow. Say good night to Mr. Fleming. I’ll tuck you in later.”
She gave another dramatic sigh. “Good night, Mr. Fleming.”
“Good night.” I tossed her teddy bear at her. She caught it clean, then ran to her bedroom. The sudden creak of bedsprings indicated she’d made a successful flying leap.
Malone paced slowly over and shut Norrie’s door, then turned toward me. “She doesn’t seem upset at all.”
“I tried to cushion things,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“She’s got quite a talent.” I tapped the portfolio.
“Yes. She is very smart. Sometimes too smart. I’m sorry about that gangster remark.”
“Don’t worry, I get it a lot. There’s nothing in it.” Not much, anyway.
“It’s t
his town… and my job, I suppose. My former job, I should say.” He grimaced, which must have been painful with that shiner.
“You’re not going back?”
He shook his head, shuffling to an overstuffed chair and easing into it with a small groan. “Not a chance.”
“What’ll you do?”
“Find another job when my face heals up.”
I drifted over to look at the fort and the building again. The kid had a hell of an eye for detail. “Not a lot of those around these days.”
“There’s always work for a good bartender. I’ve been at the Flying Ace for such a long time, though, I’d gotten rather used to it. There were jokes about my being a fixture.” The unbruised patches on his face were dead white. He wouldn’t be able to hold off his fatigue forever, but I needed him to keep talking.
“If you’ve been there for so long, then Nevis should take you back. He can get rid of the goons.”
“Not if he hears their side of the story first.”
“I can fix it for you with him.”
Malone waved one hand. “No, really, it’s for the best. You saw how the others reacted when I was down. They won’t tolerate me now, believe me, I know.”
I could tell that he did, since this wasn’t his first beating and probably not the last. People could be vicious to those who were different from the crowd. Something I had in common with him.
“Besides,” he said, “you’ve done so very much helping me this far. I can never repay you.”
“Maybe you can.”
“How?”
“Tell me what the setup is between Shivvey, Rita, and Nevis.”
He came out of his weariness just enough to give me a blank stare. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“What they are to each other. Nothing you say will get back to them from me.”
The blank look relaxed. “Oh, that. Mr. Coker and Miss Robillard are very close friends. Intimate, you might say.”
“Are they really gone on each other, though?”
He didn’t have to think on that one. “They strike me as being friendly, but not in love. Neither one is the sort to settle down and make a family. I would say that they are… convenient to each other.”