“Phil and Joe?”
He nodded.
“Look,” I said. “Phil and Joe are hardly saints. You don’t find saints in the finance business. You rarely find saints in the respectable banking business, for that matter. And Beverley Finance is as far removed from the respectable banking business as—”
I had a good image cooked up but he cut me off. “Jeff,” he said, “let me say two things. First of all, no matter how crooked Phil and Joe may seem to you, their operations are strictly within the letter of the law. Our clients are not pulled off the streets and nobody makes them borrow. They come to us—remember that. They come to us because we fulfill a legitimate need.”
I shrugged. There was room for argument on that score. You might say we created the “legitimate need” with our coy little advertisements. But I let him finish what he was trying to say.
“Second,” he went on, “neither Phil nor Joe expects anybody working at the place to be a plaster saint. If a man beats his wife they don’t care. If a man takes dope they don’t care. But if it gets in the way of the business they do care, and for that who can blame them?”
I held up the empty glass and nodded at it. “Does this get in the way of the business?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He looked unhappy. “You keep a bottle in your desk—twice yesterday you took a drink while there were clients in the office. You smelled of liquor and the clients can tell this. You slur your words from time to time—maybe you haven’t realized this but I’ve noticed it. You—”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly. You put through one application that it was lucky Miss Glaser caught because he was in the book as a deadbeat. All you had to do was look in the book and you would have known it, but you got careless.”
“Which one was that?”
“Harwell, Farwell, I forget.”
“Carwell,” I said. “Herbert Carwell. Hell, he seemed perfectly okay. I didn’t bother—”
“They always seem okay. Normally you would have checked the book, you always check the book before approving an application. This time you didn’t.”
“I—”
“Jeff,” he said, “I’m not trying to get on your back. I’m just trying to say that you’d better straighten out before you get fired, and I’m trying to say this as a friend. Is there something bothering you that maybe I can help you with? Is it money or anything like that?”
“No.”
It was a hundred thousand dollars that I didn’t have, two women whom I didn’t have, a whole life that I didn’t have. But I didn’t tell him this.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
I shook my head.
“Will you try to lay off the liquor? Look, it’s not just the job. My wife’s brother, he started drinking once five years ago and he hasn’t stopped yet. It can sneak up on you and all of a sudden you can’t stop or you don’t want to stop or I don’t know what. My wife’s brother, he’s a mess now. An alcoholic. A bum. Once a month he’s over to the house begging for a handout so he can buy a drink. What can I do? He’s my wife’s flesh and blood, I can’t turn him down. But before he started drinking he was a doctor with a practice that brought him in about thirty gees a year. A rich man, Jeff. Not rich like Rockefeller, but richer than either of us’ll ever be. Now he’s a bum. You see what I mean?”
I nodded.
“Try,” he said. “Just do me that favor. Favor—it’s a favor to yourself more than a favor to me. Just try to take it easy and cut down on the drinking.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.”
I don’t know whether I meant it or not. I was just sick of listening to him, sick of hearing about his goddamned wife’s brother, sick of the whole sermon and the whole do-gooder bit he was playing. There was no question about his sincerity, no question but that he was one hell of a good guy trying to help me out.
This didn’t make me one whit less sick of listening to him.
We let it lay there and we started to eat the slop on our plates. He was plainly embarrassed—the two of us never talked much and now he had given me a straight-from-the-shoulder bit and he was worried about it. I could understand that.
We finished up, lit cigarettes and sipped coffee. The waiter glared at us, wishing we would get out already so he could fill the table with two other slobs.
We got back to the office, worked through the afternoon. Les and I didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the day, which was easy because it was one hell of a busy afternoon. I had a good twenty people in the first two hours and things were hectic.
I kept wanting to reach for the bottle, kept wanting one little shot to make the afternoon go a little faster. But I left the bottle where it was.
Evidently what Les had said had made some sort of impression on me. Hell, I didn’t want to be out of a job. I joked a lot about Beverley Finance and I had a fairly cynical attitude for the whole mess, but it was a pleasant place to work and it paid a lot better than most occupations I was suited for.
That was only part of it. The other was that damned sermon about his wife’s brother, the doctor with the big thirst. I didn’t want to wind up in some gutter. I didn’t want to be an alcoholic, and I didn’t need Les to tell me that I was well on the way to that happy state.
But—
One time I had the drawer open and sat there looking down at that beautiful bottle.
But I left it there. It wasn’t easy, but I left it there and closed the drawer again.
I got through the afternoon. Somehow, due to the grace of some unknown and mysterious god, I got through the afternoon. It was tough but I made it.
And then it was five o’clock and I walked out into New York, gobbled a plate of chili at the Alamo on 47th Street and washed it down with cream soda. Beer is perfect with chili but I stuck to cream soda.
I left the restaurant and went for a stroll.
And then the world flushed itself down my toilet.
Chapter Six
THE ALAMO CHILE HOUSE, the only place I’ve ever come across where it is possible to get a really good plate of chile con carne, is situated on 47th Street between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, directly across the street from the Hotel Rio. I left the chile house a few minutes after six, wandered across the street to exchange pleasant words with the clerk on duty at the Rio, and wandered back out to the street a few minutes later.
From there I wandered over to Sixth, glanced around balefully at throngs of tourists from Wisconsin, and headed uptown. The damnedest thing was that I kept passing bars. There are roughly four bars to a block in midtown Manhattan and you never notice them quite as inevitably as when you have decided to cut down on your drinking. I passed Lippy’s Bar and Hogan’s Bar and the Left Field Bar & Grill and the Goldfish Bowl. I passed Alcoholics Unanimous and Ye Olde Cornere Saloone and Raoul Dufy’s Tavern. I passed one dyke bar, three fag bars, and any number of heterosexual establishments. I passed posh bars and crud bars, patrician bars and plebian bars, bourgeois bars and proletarian bars.
Bar.
After bar.
After bar.
Each bar beckoned to me. Each bar murmured whorishly that one drink would make all the difference in the world. Hey, called each bar in turn. One drink ain’t gonna hurtcha, fellow. Just a lil nip to take the edges off. A taste of the stuff to rub off the corners. Whaddaya say, fellow?
I said to hell with it.
At 57th Street I made a right turn and walked east, figuring that if worse came to worst I could always go swimming in the East River. What the hell, I was having a nice walk. It was a nice evening after an essentially horrible day and I was just good old Jeff Flanders out for a stroll.
I crossed Fifth, sniffed appreciatively at the healthy smell of money that permeates the Avenue, and kept on walking. I looked at people and decided that they were all ugly. I looked in store windows and decided that there wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to buy for myself. I wa
lked quickly past the bars and pretended they weren’t there.
I crossed Madison.
Nice Street, Madison.
I kept going.
I crossed Park.
Nice Street, Park.
And I kept going.
Another right at Lex, straight for a couple blocks, right again at 54th and back toward home.
Across Park.
Almost across Madison.
But not quite.
Because there she was.
I almost missed her. She didn’t look like Gibbsville anymore, didn’t look like nineteen years old or like the Hotel Somerville.
She looked like money.
A black jersey dress that fit her like a second skin. An ermine stole that dangled around her lovely throat like it belonged there. A braided leather leash that connected her hand with a simpy-looking brown dachshund.
Candy.
My first reaction was one of shock. I hadn’t forgotten her, of course. She was not the type of woman you’d forget any more than you’d forget you’re dying of cancer. Every day I remembered her, thought about her, ached physically and emotionally for her. But if someone had predicted that I would run into her on the street I would have laughed in his face.
Ha-ha.
Double ha-ha.
But the bit was this—I thought of her as something out of reach, something I would never get hold of again. Once I called her and all I got was an Annie-doesn’t-live-here-any-more answer. I figured from then on that wherever she was she was out of my world. Our two worlds collided.
She was walking toward me, her and her two-bit gold-plated puppy on a string, and I saw her before she saw me. I also saw her discover me, which was a rather interesting experience. Her eyes went wide for just the briefest fraction of an instant; then they turned away and she hurried on, hoping she could pass me without my seeing her.
I waited until she was next to me on the sidewalk; then I shot out a hand and caught hold of her elbow. I have to give her credit—she didn’t lose any of that perfect composure, didn’t jump or get startled or let out a scream or anything. She turned her head and looked at me and said in a very soft and very level tone: “Let go of me.”
I let go of her. But when she started to walk on I grabbed hold of her again.
“Look,” I said. “I’ve got to see you.”
“Why?”
The question caught me intellectually flat-footed. I didn’t say anything for a minute.
“Jeff,” she said softly, “you don’t have to see me. We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“But—”
“I have everything I want,” she said. “Without you.”
I looked at her clothes, her hair-do, her dumb little dog. It looked as though she was right.
“Land your millionaire?”
She nodded.
“What’s he like in bed?”
She smiled—a sick little Mona Lisa smile that said she knew more than she was telling.
“I’m happy,” she said. “I’m as happy as I could possibly be.”
“Don’t you ever want me?”
She thought that one over for all of three seconds. “I used to,” she said. “I told you that I’d rather get tossed by you than anybody else. But a girl has to make certain sacrifices.”
“You talk fancy,” I said. “You talk a lot more precisely.”
She smiled again. The same smile, the one that let me know I was in the dark on some salient point.
“Candy,” I said. “Baby, I need you. I need you more than I ever needed anything or anybody.”
“You have your wife, don’t you?”
I told her about that.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said, and she said it as though she meant it. “I really am, Jeff. But what do you expect me to do about it?”
I told her what I expected her to do about it.
“Jeff,” she said, sadly. “Jeff, you can’t possibly think I’m going to leave the person who’s supporting me and go back with you, do you? I’ve got exactly where I always wanted to get and you expect me to throw it all up? That just doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’ve got where you wanted to get, huh? Just where the hell are you?”
“In the lap of luxury.”
“You’re a kept woman,” I said. “You’re the same thing as a whore except a whore is more democratic. A whore does it for anybody and you do it for just one customer, but you’re still the same thing.”
She didn’t say anything. The words seemed to roll right off her.
“You think you’re happy, Candy? You’re not happy. You’re sick.”
“If I’m sick,” she said, “I can go to an analyst. I can afford it now.”
“Candy—”
“Do you realize that some analysts get fifty dollars an hour? If I went to one of those five days a week it would cost fifty dollars more than you earn. Think about it, Jeff. Think that part over.”
“Candy, a man who makes ten thousand dollars a year is hardly a poor man.”
“Or a rich man.”
“Candy—”
“Jeff,” she said, impatiently, “just what in the world do you want?”
“I want you to live with me.”
“I’m sorry.”
I took a breath. “Then … then go to bed with me just one more time. Just once—it won’t hurt you and it sure as hell won’t hurt the bastard who’s keeping you. And I’d … appreciate it.”
It sounds ridiculous now; it must have sounded equally ridiculous to her at the time. The only person to whom it seemed sensible and logical was a grade-A moron by the name of Jeff Flanders, and it even seemed pretty silly to him a second or two after he said it.
“No,” she said, which was a relatively sane thing for her to say.
“Candy—”
“I’ve entered into a business arrangement,” she said. “You don’t seem to understand that.”
“But—”
“I have a code of ethics. Part of the arrangement was the stipulation that I remain true to the bastard who’s keeping me, as you put it. Therefore—”
“Stipulation,” I echoed. “Pretty big word for a hick from Gibbsville, wouldn’t you say?”
She frowned at me.
“Candy,” I pleaded. “Just once—”
She turned away from me but I caught her arm again and she turned reluctantly to face me.
“Remember what it was like? Remember the time in the elevator, the time on the floor, the time we took a bath together?”
She remembered—it was plain to see in the shadow of a grin that crossed that beautiful face. I barely heard her when she murmured It was nice in a very soft and infinitely sensual whisper.
She remembered—but she chose to forget. In a second she was all business, all frigidity, all coldness. She shrugged away from me and her eyes were hard as diamonds as she stared at me.
“I’m going now,” she said.
“Let me come with you.”
“You may not come with me. I want to walk alone and I do not want you with me.”
“I’m coming anyway. I’m damned better company than that silly-looking hound.”
“If you don’t leave me alone,” she said, the Gibbsville creeping back into her voice, “I’ll call a cop—and there’s one right on the corner.”
Candy was not the brightest girl in the world. She had never been remarkable for her intellectual prowess and she proved it that fine evening.
I let her alone. But when she was half a block away I started following her and she didn’t so much as turn her head to see if I was around. Maybe she took it for granted that I would disappear from her life as she had tried to disappear from mine. That was the type of uncomplicated mental activity of which she was capable. When things didn’t fit for her she ignored them, and now she was trying to ignore me.
That was her way. It made life with her or without her equally impossible, but it also simplified the job of following h
er. Tailing a person is not the hardest poser in the world when the person being tailed is unaware of the presence of the tail. You simply walk after the person. That’s all. You don’t dodge into alleyways or duck behind parked cars or any other moronical games that private eyes play in motion pictures. You just walk, and the person that you’re tailing also walks, and it’s lots of fun all around.
I was a natural-born detective. She walked and I walked—over 54th to Madison, down Madison to 53rd, five doors down 53rd to an imposing brownstone where the doorman opened the door for her and in she went.
A nice short simple walk, uncomplicated except for a moment when the damnable dachshund urinated on a lamppost. That was the sole interruption.
So there I was, Jeff Flanders, the defective detective, standing on the street in front of an imposing brownstone in which lived my erstwhile lady-love.
Now what?
Ah, of course. Now I had to find out which apartment she lived in. I reached back into my bagful of fictional-private-eye lore and took a ten-dollar bill from my wallet, planning to bribe the docile-looking doorman. That was the way the guys did it in the movies. Lord, do they throw money around! A good doorman must get five yards a week in bribes alone.
Then something struck me, something which may well have never occurred to Mike Hammer or Ellery Queen or Hercule Poirot or Shell Scott. Hell, I didn’t have to stick ten bucks in the doorman’s grubby paw.
All I had to do was look on the mailbox.
I walked bravely past the doorman, entered the plush little vestibule and turned an inquiring eye upon the row of mailboxes and doorbells. I found what I was looking for in a hurry—Candace Cain in raised script on a little white card over the bell for apartment 4-B.
Now what?
I considered taking the elevator to the fourth floor and knocking on Candy’s door. After seven seconds of careful deliberation I figured out what a prime example of human stupidity that would be. She would toss me out on my rump, maybe call in the law. She had made it relatively plain that she didn’t want to be bothered and if I showed up knocking on her door I was only asking for trouble.
So the natural thing to do was to go home, pick up a bottle and start in where I had left off before Les Boloff had so rudely interrupted me. To hell with Les Boloff. To hell with Joe Burns and Phil Delfy and the Beverley Finance Company. To hell with Candace Cain, raised script and ermine stole and funny dog. To hell, for that matter, with Jeff Flanders.
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