by Orrie Hitt
“No,” she disagreed. “He gave the baby a name and you didn’t.”
I tried to pin her down on the kid — it was a girl, by the way — and when it had happened, but I didn’t have any luck.
“Who knows?” She laughed and looked at the waiter but I motioned him away. “What’s the difference? I’ve got her.”
We had a nightcap and then I drove her home. On the way over I asked her about her husband, if he could do a cover for the local book and things of that nature. She said that he could but that the prosperity might kill him since he hadn’t made a dime from his art work in months. I told her that it would be a simple thing but that there was a hundred bucks in it and he could have it if he wanted it.
I stopped a block away from her house and waited for her to get out of the car.
“I’ll tell him about the cover,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll call him later tonight and we can meet somewhere.”
She opened the door.
“You wouldn’t want to come to the apartment?” There was something sad in the way she appealed. “You could see the baby, Danny. She’s a nice little girl. In spite of everything.”
“Another time,” I said. “I’ll call him.”
She said the number was in the book so I didn’t bother writing it down. She cried a little, thanking me for the money, and I told her that was all right, I was glad to do it. Hell, it made me as happy as though I’d lost four fingers off of one hand.
“Good night,” she said.
“Be seeing you.”
She turned and went down the street, passing under a light. Her steps were slow and unsteady and I wondered what she’d do if the kid was awake and raising a fuss. She had more than an even chance of falling down and going to sleep on the spot.
I drove downtown, called Madeline from a pay phone and told her I’d be around but that I’d be late.
After that I called the motel and asked if there were any messages. There was one from a shoe repair guy on Fulton Street who wanted an ad in the book and another from a barber who wanted to cancel out. The barber was in for a surprise. I had his money and he was going along for the ride, like it or not. And there was another call for me, from Sandy Adams. But when I tried her number there was no answer so I finally gave it up and settled for coffee, black, at the counter.
At nine-thirty I called the Collins house. Gloria’s husband answered and when I told him who I was he said, yes, sure, his wife had mentioned the cover to him and he’d be glad to do it. He didn’t sound so enthusiastic, though, when I suggested that I pick him up in a half hour and iron out the details.
“It’s kind of late,” he said. He had one of those tired voices that could rock you to sleep.
“It’s always late in the book business,” I reminded him.
He admitted, reluctantly, that he guessed that was so and he agreed to be ready around ten.
I returned to the counter, had another cup of coffee and bought a pack of Winstons. Then I sat there looking at the clock.
I hoped I had this one figured right and that it wouldn’t blow up in my face.
But it had to be done.
I wouldn’t be safe until I’d done it.
And maybe I wouldn’t be safe after that.
9
OF COURSE, I’d never seen this Billy Collins before but I’d made up my mind about him from some of the things Gloria had told me, and I had him pegged straight through the middle.
He was a pantywaist jerk with only two purposes in life — breathing and, in between breaths, crazy art.
“I’ve never done any commercial covers before,” he said as we buzzed crosstown. “Most of my material has the modernistic slant.”
He sat there very prim on the seat of the Caddy, staring straight ahead, with his portfolio resting on his lap. He was rather thin, almost to the point of being skinny, and he stood only about five seven tall.
“Well, my work is pretty simple,” I said. “I could almost do it myself if I had the time.”
I could see that my statement didn’t meet with any rousing acceptance on his part. He looked down at his portfolio, hefting it, and I got the idea that he’d only come along for the ride, that he was doing it solely because his wife expected him to do it. And when a guy’s got somebody who beds him down and buys his booze he has to make a move in the right direction once in a while.
“Like a drink?” I wanted to know.
He began to relax and I knew that I’d hit something that had been on his mind all day long.
“I haven’t any money,” he said.
“You don’t need any.”
I tried to talk to him some more about his “art” but I didn’t get the conversation off the ground. He said that most people didn’t want the stuff he painted, that they couldn’t appreciate art that required them to think. I let it drop.
I asked him where he wanted to go but he said it didn’t matter, anyplace was all right, so I drove over to the flats and parked alongside of the Wishing Well, a high-class place with over-your-head prices. I wanted to impress him.
“Order something for yourself and a rum collins for me,” I said, finding a table toward the rear of the long and narrow bar. “And excuse me a minute while I make a phone call.”
He told me to take my time and I went on up to the phone booth. Sandy answered, at last, and I told her I’d gotten her message.
“Oh, it wasn’t much,” she said. She had a nice voice on the phone, warm and personal. “I made up something to mail out to the churches and I thought you might go over it with me.”
“I’ll stop around in the morning.”
“Oh?” She sounded disappointed. Then, “I thought we might do it tonight, since I plan to be out of town tomorrow.”
“Well — ”
“Where are you now?”
I told her I was at the Wishing Well, that I didn’t know how long I’d be tied up, but that I could drive out later.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “It’s so hot I could use a drink, anyway. I’ll drive down and when you’ve finished maybe you’ll have a chance to look at this for me.”
I thought it over and decided there wasn’t anything wrong with the idea.
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll be at the bar.”
“Fine.”
I cradled the phone and returned to the table. I sat down and squeezed the lemon into my drink. I noticed that Billy’s glass was empty and I yelled to the girl to bring us a couple of the same.
“I brought along some samples of my work,” he said, placing the portfolio on the table.
I looked at them. He was right. A fellow had to think to keep up with that crazy stuff. The only trouble was you didn’t know where to start thinking.
“Not bad,” I said. For my money, it stunk. “But it isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Actually, I could have told him in one sentence what it was that I wanted. All I needed was a drawn map of the area that could be put on the cover, with the title of the book running over that. It was a job that any art student could do but it was an opening to get him to talk and I let him ramble on for five or six rounds. It was about that time that Sandy came in, nodded at me and sat down at the bar. She wore a blue dress that clung to her body like a third layer of skin. I wasted another drink before I could pull my gaze loose from the lines of her long thigh and the sweep of her legs.
“You must have had a bitch of a time,” I said to Billy. His yammering had drifted from the cover for the book to his schooling and now he was back in his childhood. “A real struggle.”
His mother had died his last year in high school and he’d finished only one year of college.
“Too commercialized,” he explained.
His old man had gone off, I guess in disgust, and he’d been fired from one advertising agency after the other. When the Korean war popped up they’d called him in for an exam and promptly rejected him for a busted ear drum.
“It’
s a funny thing,” he said. “But it never hurt. That ear never bothered me at all.”
More art work and more failure. He’d gone from one thing to another, never keeping any job very long. Three or four years before his old man had died and left him some insurance money, not because he wanted it that way but because there wasn’t anybody else to inherit it.
“After that I went to Florida,” Billy said. “Living was a lot cheaper down there. And that’s where I met my wife.”
This guy is a real bastard, I thought. This guy hasn’t even got enough ambition to go out and pimp for a woman.
“I know your wife,” I said.
He nodded and lifted his drink. His eyes had gotten a lot brighter and his thin, white face was almost flushed.
“She told me about you in Florida.”
I looked around the tables, up at the bar. There were only a few people in the place and none of them near us. I got out a quarter and dropped it into the juke box selector. I punched three numbers and music filled the night.
“It’s a funny thing,” I told him. “But we got to the gist of this little meeting long before I expected. Because that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Billy. Your wife.”
His eyes became wary.
“My wife?”
“And the kid.”
“She’s a nice baby,” he said.
His glass was empty again and I waited until the girl brought him a full one.
“But mostly I want to talk about you,” I said, after she was gone. I spoke low, just so that he could hear. “I want us to decide — you and me — only the two of us — what kind of a low son-of-a-bitch you really are.”
He pushed his drink aside and started to get up. Or, I should say, he tried to run without getting up. But I merely reached across the table, got hold of his shirt, and hauled him back into position.
“Sit tight, wonder boy,” I told him. “You try to get out of here without listening to me have my say and your insurance company is going to think you’re a miserable risk.”
In a way, I felt sorry for him. I feel sorry for almost anybody who’s scared. Even myself. But, then, we all have to be frightened once in a while. We usually get what we’ve bought.
“That kid isn’t mine and you know it,” I told him. “He’s yours, you little bastard!”
He tried to get out of there again but I hadn’t let go of him and he wasn’t going any place at all.
“Now, look here — ”
I shook him good and hard.
“You look here, jet! You listen to the voice that knows. Sure, I played fun with that number. Who wouldn’t? But I didn’t give her any kid, that much I know. And I know how she did get it. She got it because the two of you were drinking so much — maybe not you then, but she was — and one of those times you just took advantage of her. Then, when she found herself caught she thought it was me. And you let her think that way, didn’t you? You let her think that way because you could make a big shot of yourself and you’d never have to work another day in your life if you didn’t feel like it. Answer me, you no-good punk! Isn’t that the way it was!”
I had him and he knew it. I could see it in his eyes, the way he slobbered around the mouth, but I had to whack him once in the face before he began to sob like a ten-year-old kid.
“Don’t tell her!” he kept saying. “Don’t tell Gloria!”
“No. I won’t. You will.”
His eyes were haunted.
“No! Oh, Jesus, no!”
“Shut up!”
“She’d — kill me.”
“I’ll advise her not to. You aren’t worth it.”
The music ran out and I jammed another quarter into the slot. I couldn’t look at him. I wanted to ram my fist down his throat and take all of his teeth with it.
“I’ll do that cover for you for nothing,” he said.
And the silly fool meant it!
“Knock it off,” I told him. “Hell, I ought to beat you blind. You know what you did to me? You know what you’ve done to her? Christ, man, how can you sit there like that?”
He produced no answers. I doubt if he knew any.
I finished my drink.
“Tell you what I’ll do,” I said. “I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to lay this whole thing out in front of her. If you don’t, I’m coming looking for you and, you slob, you’d better not be anywhere near where I can find you.”
“I can’t!” He’d folded his arms on the table, resting his head on them. “I can’t!”
I called him a couple of four-letter words and stood up.
“Okay,” I said. “Then we’ll go down there together and do it right now!”
I glanced at the bar, trying to figure how I’d get him past Sandy Adams. It didn’t take long and even the little wave I gave her took less, but it was a mistake. I heard him come up from the table, heard the breaking glass and felt the sharp rip of it along my back almost all in one instant.
“I’ll kill you!” he shouted wildly. “I’ll kill you!”
Somebody screamed and I swung away from him, keeping low, moving away. He was like an insane person on my back and I felt the glass again, burning across my shoulders the way a hot poker burns. I called him another name, a filthy name, and I got my hands on a chair. I brought the chair up, upsetting a table, and swung it all the way to the rear. One of his hands had been moving around to my throat and it let go as he emitted a tiny sigh. I jumped forward quickly, spinning around as I did so, my back a mass of pain.
“Danny!”
It was Sandy rushing toward me from the bar.
“Get back,” I told her.
There was a lot of noise in the place, not just the music, but people yelling and one guy was out front hollering for the cops.
“Look out, Danny!”
Billy Collins was in the middle of the floor, a jagged piece of broken glass clutched in his right hand. Blood, my blood, covered the front of his shirt.
“You creep,” I told him.
I hardly noticed the pain across my shoulders as I moved in on him, watching his right hand, circling to his left. We went around once that way before I made a false approach. He jumped away from me, slammed into the table and then came away from it again.
“I’ll kill you,” he promised.
I told him he wouldn’t and we did the merry-go-round the second time. At the very same spot as before I made another lunge toward him but this time I carried it through. He was off balance, trying to get away, and when his right arm came down I got onto it and gave it an assist all the way to the rear. The glass went flying out of his hand and hit the wall.
He fell in against me.
“Break it up!” A cop had appeared out of nowhere and was yanking on my arm.
“Lock this nut up,” I told him. “Before he carves half the town.”
But the cop was careful and it took a little talking before he knew who was who and what was what.
“Once I broke up a fight and locked up the wrong guy,” he said. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Well, you’ve got the right jack this time.”
The cop pushed through the curious onlookers, dragging Billy. He’d gotten a look at my back and he’d put a pair of cuffs on Billy. Billy didn’t look at anything, just down at the floor, as he was led away.
• • •
“Never a dull moment,” I told Sandy when they were gone.
A couple of guys came up and wanted to know if I needed a lift, or if they could do anything. I told them, no, it was the shank of the evening and a guy couldn’t quit on a night out so early. But I didn’t feel as good as I sounded. My back hurt like hell and I could feel the sticky blood all the way down to the back of my legs.
“Sit down,” Sandy ordered.
I sat. Her smooth fingers unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it down off my shoulders, away from the cuts.
“You’re lucky,” she announced finally. “They’re long but not deep. All they need is a good cleaning
. And they’ll be painful.”
“There’s no news like old news.”
I got a good load of that perfume in my nose.
“I’m only trying to help,” she said.
“I know … I’m sorry.”
“Who was that man?”
“A real character. He didn’t want to take an ad in the book.”
“Now you’re being flip.”
“Sorry. Again.”
The bartender came back and wanted to know if we cared for a drink on the house. It’s so seldom you get an offer like that any more that I said, sure, okay, bring it on. He did and we sat there not saying much. I offered her a cigarette and I noticed that my hand shook when I held the light. I wasn’t scared, nor I hadn’t been scared, but I was impressed. A loose nut like Billy could ruin a guy’s motor for keeps.
She stood up suddenly, stubbing the cigarette into the ash tray.
“Come on, Danny boy, you’ve got to get those cuts taken care of.”
I told her I wasn’t going to any damn hospital.
“No. My house. I’ll clean them up for you.”
We left her car, a Plymouth coupe, in the parking lot outside and drove up in my Caddy. She went on to explain that she worked as a nurse’s aid at the hospital, when they needed her, and that she could take care of the slashes as well as anybody else.
“It’s funny a man would attack you like that,” she said.
There wasn’t any point of keeping it locked up any longer, or making her suspicious, so as we went past the carriage lamps at the driveway entrance I started telling her the whole thing. I didn’t finish until after she’d dressed my back and by that time we were out on the porch, sitting in the swing. She’d fixed a couple of tall, cool ones for the road.
“And that’s all of it,” I told her. “Every sordid detail. I wish it had never happened.”
I did.
“I feel sorry for the girl,” she said thoughtfully. “It must be a terrible experience.”
“Yeah.”
“And for you, too, Danny.”
“But not the same.”
“No,” she admitted. “Not the same.”
It was getting close to midnight and only once in a while did a car move along the street. The night sounds of the city seemed far away.