Pushover

by Orrie Hitt

  “I saw the Jacksons last night, “Madeline said. “They were cool, real cool.”

  I turned left onto the parkway that skirted the river. White sails skimmed along the surface and a motorboat, filled with crazy hand-waving kids, chugged upriver.

  “When’s Johnny due?”

  “In a week,” she said. “More or less.”

  We passed the railroad yards, the huge gasoline storage tanks and slid into the elm-shaded residential section of the river front.

  “There’s a Hertz place in town,” I said. “You’d better rent a car.”

  Madeline nodded.

  “I’ll see the Historical Society and get cards for us today. Also, I’ll drop off the typewriter somewhere and have it checked over. That last book didn’t come out so good.”

  She lit a cigarette and watched me through the smoke.

  “I thought I’d catch hell for that,” she admitted. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But I had it set on four, Danny. Honestly, I did.”

  It was the one critical thing that we had to watch out for, the typing and how it would come out in reproduction. Sometimes the type looked big and sharp and clear, almost like it was done on a lino machine, but it would come out weak and fuzzy. We’d checked it with the printer several times and we’d found the four spot to be the best pressure stroke that we could use on the IBM.

  “We’d better have another plate run on all of the pressure points,” I told Madeline. “We really ought to do it every time, checking the finished copy against the best stroke.”

  “I think so, too.”

  We talked some more about the book, whether it would be better for her to work directly on the script in the library or if she should make notes and do the final copy in her apartment. We finally decided on the library since a history of the city might get complicated in spots and all of the material was right there where she could get at it.

  I found the address on River Street and parked the Buick.

  “I won’t go in with you,” I said. “I’ve got to run out and see this dame who’s on the Council and then I’ll have to go to the library after I find somebody who can fix the typewriter.

  She leaned back into the car, smiling. She wore a thin red blouse and I could see the white line of the brassiere underneath. I knew damned well that if I went into that apartment with her I wouldn’t get out of there until afternoon, if at all.

  “Dinner at six?” she wanted to know.

  “Yeah.”

  “Kiss me, then.”

  I kissed her, watched her turn and go up the walk to the red brick apartment house. She waved and blew me a kiss from the doorway and then I drove off.

  I thought, I don’t know what to do about that dame. I don’t know what to do about her at all.

  Maybe you’ve never felt that way about a person, felt that you needed her and you had to have her and, yet, you really didn’t want her five seconds’ worth. That’s the way it had gotten for me with Madeline Jackson.

  I had to have Madeline, at least for this job. A history of a city is a long and difficult job. The material must be assembled, put together in some sort of readable fashion; and it has to be typed. In the case of our offset printing process the typing had to be perfect, the grammatical errors held to a minimum. I didn’t know enough about writing, or typing, or English to put a thing like that between covers. And it isn’t easy to find the right kind of help. Nine out of ten who say they can do it can’t do it at all. The other person in the ten, the one who can, is able to make more money writing something else. So I had to have Madeline whether I really wanted her or not. Madeline was experienced in our work, she knew how to do what had to be done, and every click of her typewriter meant money in the bank. For money going into the bank I’d put up with Madeline Jackson or sit in the hot sun with a corpse for the next five years, Sundays included.

  I hauled the Buick to a stop at a red light and waited, still thinking. When the guy in back of me started getting his morning exercise on his horn I told him to go choke and let the car roll forward. What the hell, sometimes a guy has to think, whether he’s in the middle of a traffic jam or involved with a woman. Sometimes a guy has to take time out to ask himself some questions, to answer them if he can. If he doesn’t, he soon won’t know front from back.

  “I like you,” Madeline had told me the other night. “But I don’t think I love you, Danny.”

  She’d been fishing, the way a guy bobs for eels, but she hadn’t gotten a bite. We’d lain there on the davenport, tight in each other’s arms, and I remembered the little things she’d done, like not asking for her pay when I forgot about it or typing a manuscript page three times because she wanted it to be perfect, and I’d known that she wasn’t telling me everything. She wasn’t telling me that she’d married Johnny Jackson in a moment of hope, that the hope had died and she’d found something else and that she didn’t want him any more. She didn’t tell me that this was just a business with us, up to the sex part of it and beyond that it had to be something more. No. she hadn’t told me any of that and I hadn’t asked her. We had both known, without talking about it.

  I was pretty sure that I didn’t love her, any more than I had loved Gloria Maddison or a dozen other women. She gave me what I wanted when I wanted it and, while it was a nice arrangement for the time being, it wasn’t a habit I wanted to die with. A woman, as far as I was concerned, is a little bit like a pair of shoes. Either they are new or they are used. A guy might borrow a pair of shoes to wear for a day or a week or a month but he’d hardly pay out good money for them. He might use them but he wouldn’t buy them. Borrowing is a lot different than buying, whether it’s shoes or a new car or a night in a woman’s bed.

  That’s exactly the way it was with me and Madeline Jackson.

  I drove on through the town, up toward Summer Road. In a way, I felt good about being back in Port Jessup. Not because I liked the place or the people or anything like that. I might as well be frank about it. I liked being back there because I remembered a lot of bastards in the city, a lot of lazy bastards who had almost taken me over once, and I knew that this time they would get the screwing of their lives. They had had a little bit of it, just once, and now they were asking for more. And they’d get it. This time I’d throw in the jack handle and the umbrella and see how good they felt after the umbrella was opened up and twirled around.

  I laughed, just thinking about it and, swung the Buick onto Summer Road. Wide lawns and fancy gate posts slid past. This was the section of pretty young governesses and anemic looking kids. This was the section where the modern mother gave her kids a break by saying hello to them twice a day. These were the people who could defy all the laws of the city and get a medal instead of a ticket. This was where Sandy Adams lived. I wondered, casually, what the bitch was like.

  Summer Road. I saw the typical half-acre lawn with the water fountain in the center, fifty-dollar carriage lamps on either side of the driveway and tiny colonial-style windows that cost more to wash than to replace.

  I turned into the driveway, listened to the gravel splatter against the fenders and parked under a mass of green vines that crawled across a couple of thousand board feet of lattice work.

  I got out of the car, walked up the steps and across the wide porch. The porch extended the whole length of the house and there were so many tables and chairs and hammocks scattered around that I guessed nobody ever bothered walking to the other end of it. It would have been too much trouble and you’d have needed a chart and a compass to get back the same day.

  I pushed the chime button and tapped my foot to the first few bars of Tonight We Love.

  “Good morning.”

  The old dame on the other side of the screen door had a lot of gray hair on top of a lot of face.

  “I’d like to see Miss Adams,” I said, noticing the white uniform.

  She pushed a button inside and the door practically knocked me down
when it opened.

  “Won’t you come in?”

  I went in, almost spraining an ankle in about three inches of carpet.

  “I’ll close the big door,” the woman said. “It’s time to turn the air-conditioning on.”

  Class, I thought, watching her close about four hundred dollars’ worth of matched maple plank. A person who lived in a place like this had only one thing left that they didn’t know everything about. Dying.

  “Come this way, please.”

  I followed the maid through wide hall, deciding that if the carpet got any deeper I’d have to buy a pair of snow-shoes for my next visit.

  “Please be seated in the library. Miss Adams will be with you in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  I entered the room and the maid stood there smiling, waiting for me to sit down. I sat.

  “Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “Danny Fulton. Of Community Enterprises. Tell Miss Adams it is in regard to the Minisink Council of Churches.”

  The maid smiled.

  “Oh, yes. I believe Miss Adams did mention that she was expecting you.”

  The woman went away and I looked around the room. She’d called it the library and I guess maybe it was. There were books everywhere, except on the ceiling and the floor. The place was finished off with knotty pine, not the light colored stuff you usually see but stained dark. There was a fireplace at one end and over that hung the picture of a long, sleek sailing-ship. An oil painting, I got up to go over and look at it. Standing there by the fireplace, looking up at it, I could see the mountains in the background and the gulls overhead and the men on board. I thought I recognized the ship, or something else about the picture, but I couldn’t be sure

  “Some of my brother’s work,” a female voice said. “What do you think of it, Mr. Fulton?”

  “It’s okay,” I said, turning around.

  The girl who had entered the room was fairly tall, about five-seven, and in her early twenties. Her hair was black and cut very short, the way some of the Italian movie actresses have theirs cut. She wore pink shorts and a pink halter and she had a nice shape, full and generous and not too well hidden. I kept looking at her, going from one thing to another, but when my glance found her eyes it came to a sudden, shattering stop.

  “You’re Mr. Fulton?”

  “Yes.”

  Her voice was low, throaty, and it went down inside of me, digging deep. Her eyes weren’t brown and they weren’t blue. They were big and wide and about every color you could think of had been stuck into them and blended together.

  “I’m Miss Adams,” she said. “Won’t you sit down?”

  She smiled at me and I liked that, too. She had a nice smile, full and inviting, and it did something to her face. Not that there was anything wrong with her face; there wasn’t, but the smile and those eyes made it live, like she felt good inside and she was trying to pass some of it along.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I sat down in one of the chairs and she took the one across from me.

  “I just got back from Colorado,” she said. “Only day before yesterday. I’m sorry I missed your representative and the Council meeting.”

  Al, I thought, looking at those long brown legs, Al if you’d seen this you’d never have gone home to Scranton.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “That was just a preliminary meeting.”

  She fluffed out her hair and her breasts pushed out against the halter, straining. She smiled, obviously knowing what I saw and what I liked. The smile told me something else, too. It told me that it wouldn’t do me a bit of good, that this was Crown Prince stuff only and that I might as well tie a rock onto the idea and drown it.

  “I have some notes upstairs,” she said. “They cover the meeting and the project rather fully. I can get them if you wish.”

  I waved that aside and lit a cigarette.

  “As long as you’re in charge of this, Miss Adams, we can take it from there.”

  “Very well.”

  “First, there has to be a legal agreement drawn. Both of us are entitled to know where we stand and what we’re going to do. We don’t want any misunderstanding in the future.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Fulton.”

  I relaxed, trying not to look at her, trying to get the business thing out into the open where we could settle it.

  “We sell all the ads, pay publishing costs and help you sell the book. Sales price of the book is two dollars and the Council — or the individual churches, whichever you prefer — gets fifty cents of that.”

  She looked like she wanted a cigarette so I offered her one. She took it and bent forward while I held the light. I was disappointed. The halter was one of those kind that really sticks to its work.

  “I think it should be a dollar,” Sandy Adams said.

  I sat back, looking at her. Pretty, I thought. Beautiful. And smart. Trouble if I ever saw it. Trouble all the way down the line.

  “I’ll go along with that,” I said. “After the first thousand copies.”

  She thought about that, staring at me and not smiling.

  “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll go along with that. Now, Mr. Fulton, what about the printing?”

  “We do it offset.”

  “I know. I saw your policemen’s book. The right-hand margins weren’t straight.”

  I shrugged.

  “Nobody cares about that,” I said. “The material in the book is the important thing.”

  Her lips parted and I noticed that her teeth were white and even.

  “We want a nice-looking book, Mr. Fulton.”

  “Sure.”

  “You could make the margins straight if you wanted to.”

  Madeline had mentioned it to me before, about using an IBM executive typewriter. It had seemed like a lot of unnecessary work to me but, of course, it would make a better job.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “We’ll do that. Anything else?”

  “Yes. How many pages will be in the book?”

  “Around eighty.”

  “Hard cover?”

  “No. But the cover will be of good quality, heavy paper. Nothing to be ashamed of, I assure you.”

  “Saddle-stitched?”

  I grinned. I had to give this doll credit. Maybe she was loaded with dough that had been left to her but she knew what she was talking about.

  “??,” I replied. “You can get a good job with staples up to a hundred pages. And we’ll be close to eighty. The council is in this to make some money and so are we.”

  She seemed to accept my thoughts and that made me feel a whole lot better. Actually, if you think you can get a five thousand copy sale on a local yarn you could afford to have it done in hard cover. The only thing is that it takes more time, getting the type set, and you have a lot of extra work to do that you don’t have with the typewriter and offset process. Time in the fund-raising business means money and money means success. You reap either success or failure. There just isn’t any choice.

  “Well, I’ll get the contracts worked up,” I told her, rising. “I’ll probably get in touch with you tomorrow for your signature.”

  “I’ll want to read them first, Mr. Fulton.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  She walked with me through the hall and out toward the front door. I could smell her perfume but that wasn’t all I smelled. I smelled something else, something much more potent. I smelled the woman of her all around me.’

  “I think I should be honest with you, Mr. Fulton,” she said when we reached the door. “I am familiar with some of the methods you have used in other communities and I can’t say that I approve of all of them.”

  I swung around, facing her.

  “Don’t let your charitable heart run away with you,” I said roughly. “If you’ve got any idea that you don’t want this thing done here, or that you’re going to run over the top of me, let’s drop it right now.”

  She stood there smiling up at me, h
er breasts rising and falling with every breath that she took.

  “I like a man with a temper,” she said. “I think we’ll get along.”

  “I’m only telling you, Miss Adams.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m not in this for my health, you know. I’m in it to make a dollar and if people stick all the way down the middle with me, I’ll do the same thing for them.”

  “I’m sure of that.” Her smile never changed, her eyes lingering on my face. “We both have a job to do, Mr. Fulton. I can see no reason why we won’t be able to accomplish it together.”

  “We’ll give the wheel a spin,” I told her.

  She said goodbye, that she’d probably see me the next day, and I went out. Slowly, I walked to the car and got in. I drove away, sure of just one thing. She’d be a tough one to handle and no mistake about that.

  Part Two

  OPERATION CASH

  5

  I DON’T know why, but I kept thinking about that summer when I’d been a kid, about fifteen, and the couple of weeks that I’d spent up in the country, not far from Roscoe, with a broken-down cousin. In particular, I thought about those days when we’d gone out to pick blackberries, remembering the thick black clusters on the sprawling vines and how easy it was to fill the buckets. Only this time I wasn’t picking any blackberries. I was picking money out of the pockets of the businessmen in Port Jessup. And the money belt filled up just as easily as the berry bucket.

  “What’d I tell you?” Al exclaimed one noon at lunch. “Didn’t I say this was the biggest deal we’d ever had?”

  I told him it was.

  I’d kept Al in off the road to help with the sales of the advertising. I’d never done this before, usually covering the big stores and industries myself and letting a couple of local yokels do the rest of it; but this thing in Port Jessup was, like Al said, very big and I wanted to hit it from every angle, hard and quick. AI was a good direct salesman, sure of himself, and the thirty-five or forty bucks a day he was picking up in extra commissions didn’t hurt his attitude any.