Kate remembered how Faye had looked the last time she saw her, lying in her purple casket, dressed in white, with the undertaker's smile on her lips and enough powder and rouge to cover her sallow skin.
A voice behind Kate had said, "She looks better than she has in years." And another voice had answered, "Maybe the same thing would do me some good," and there was a double snicker. The first voice would be Ethel, and the second Trixie. Kate remembered her own half-humorous reaction. Why, she had thought, a dead whore looks like anybody else.
Yes, the first voice must have been Ethel. Ethel always got into the night thinking, and Ethel always brought a shrinking fear with her, the stupid, clumsy, nosy bitch--the lousy old bag. And it happened very often that Kate's mind would tell her, "Now wait a moment. Why is she a lousy old bag? Isn't it because you made a mistake? Why did you float her? If you'd used your head and kept her here--"
Kate wondered where Ethel was. How about one of those agencies to find Ethel--at least to find where she went? Yes, and then Ethel would tell about that night and show the glass. Then there'd be two noses sniffing instead of one. Yes, but what difference would that make? Every time Ethel got a beer in her she would be telling somebody. Oh, sure, but they would think she was just a buzzed old hustler. Now an agency man--no--no agencies.
Kate spent many hours with Ethel. Did the judge have any idea it was a frame--too simple? It shouldn't have been an even hundred dollars. That was obvious. And how about the sheriff? Joe said they dropped her over the line into Santa Cruz County. What did Ethel tell the deputy who drove her out? Ethel was a lazy old bat. Maybe she had stayed in Watsonville. There was Pajaro, and that was a railroad section, and then the Pajaro River and the bridge into Watsonville. Lots of section hands went back and forth, Mexicans, some Hindus. That puddlehead Ethel might have thought she could turn enough tricks with the track workers. Wouldn't it be funny if she had never left Watsonville, thirty miles away? She could even slip in over the line and see her friends if she wanted to. Maybe she came to Salinas sometimes. She might be in Salinas right now. The cops weren't likely to keep too much on the look for her. Maybe it would be a good idea to send Joe over to Watsonville to see if Ethel was there. She might have gone on to Santa Cruz. Joe could look there too. It wouldn't take him long. Joe could find any hooker in any town in a few hours. If he found her they could get her back somehow. Ethel was a fool. But maybe when he found her it would be better if Kate went to her. Lock the door. Leave a "Do not disturb" sign. She could get to Watsonville, do her business, and get back. No taxis. Take a bus. Nobody saw anybody on the night buses. People sleeping with their shoes off and coats rolled up behind their heads. Suddenly she knew she would be afraid to go to Watsonville. Well, she could make herself go. It would stop all this wondering. Strange she hadn't thought of sending Joe before. That was perfect. Joe was good at some things, and the dumb bastard thought he was clever. That was the kind easiest to handle. Ethel was stupid. That made her hard to handle.
As her hands and her mind grew more crooked, Kate began to rely more and more on Joe Valery as her assistant in chief, as her go-between, and as her executioner. She had a basic fear of the girls in the house--not that they were more untrustworthy than Joe but that the hysteria which lay very close to the surface might at any time crack through their caution and shatter their sense of self-preservation and tear down not only themselves but their surroundings. Kate had always been able to handle this ever-present danger, but now the slow-depositing calcium and the slow growth of apprehension caused her to need help and to look for it from Joe. Men, she knew, had a little stronger wall against self-destruction than the kind of women she knew.
She felt that she could trust Joe, because she had in her files a notation relating to one Joseph Venuta who had walked away from a San Quentin road gang in the fourth year of a five-year sentence for robbery. Kate had never mentioned this to Joe Valery , but she thought it might have a soothing influence on him if he got out of hand.
Joe brought the breakfast tray every morning--green China tea and cream and toast. When he had set it on her bedside table he made his report and got his orders for the day. He knew that she was depending on him more and more. And Joe was very slowly and quietly exploring the possibility of taking over entirely. If she got sick enough there might be a chance. But very profoundly Joe was afraid of her.
"Morning," he said.
"I'm not going to sit up for it, Joe. Just give me the tea. You'll have to hold it."
"Hands bad?"
"Yes. They get better after a flare up."
"Looks like you had a bad night."
"No," said Kate. "I had a good night. I've got some new medicine."
Joe held the cup to her lips, and she drank the tea in little sips, breathing in over it to cool it. "That's enough," she said when the cup was only half empty. "How was the night?"
"I almost came to tell you last night," said Joe. "Hick came in from King City. Just sold his crop. Bought out the house. Dropped seven hundred not counting what he give the girls."
"What was his name?"
"I don't know. But I hope he comes in again."
"You should get the name, Joe. I've told you that."
"He was cagey."
"All the more reason to get his name. Didn't any of the girls frisk him?"
"I don't know."
"Well, find out."
Joe sensed a mild geniality in her and it made him feel good. "I'll find out," he assured her. "I got enough to go on."
Her eyes went over him, testing and searching, and he knew something was coming. "You like it here?" she asked softly.
"Sure. I got it good here."
"You could have it better--or worse," she said.
"I like it good here,'' he said uneasily, and his mind cast about for a fault in himself. "I got it real nice here."
She moistened her lips with her arrow-shaped tongue. "You and I can work together," she said.
"Any way you want it," he said ingratiatingly, and a surge of pleasant expectation grew in him. He waited patiently. She took a good long time to begin.
At last she said, "Joe, I don't like to have anything stolen."
"I didn't take nothing."
"I didn't say you did."
"Who?"
"I'll get to it, Joe. Do you remember that old buzzard we had to move?"
"You mean Ethel what's-her-name?"
"Yes. That's the one. She got away with something. I didn't know it then."
"What?"
A coldness crept into her voice. "Not your business, Joe. Listen to me! You're a smart fellow. Where would you go to look for her?"
Joe's mind worked quickly, not with reason but with experience and instinct. "She was pretty beat up. She wouldn't go far. An old hustler don't go far."
"You're smart. You think she might be in Watsonville?"
"There or maybe Santa Cruz. Anyways, I'll give odds she ain't farther away than San Jose."
She caressed her fingers tenderly. "Would you like to make five hundred, Joe?"
"You want I should find her?"
"Yes. Just find her. When you do, don't let her know. Just bring me the address. Got that? Just tell me where she is."
"Okay," said Joe. "She must of rolled you good."
"That's not your business, Joe."
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "You want I should start right off?"
"Yes. Make it quick, Joe."
"Might be a little tough," he said. "It's been a long time."
"That's up to you."
"I'll go to Watsonville this afternoon."
"That's good, Joe."
She was thoughtful. He knew she was not finished and that she was wondering whether she should go on. She decided.
"Joe, did--did she do anything--well, peculiar--that day in court?"
"Hell, no. Said she was framed like they always do."
And then something came back to him that he hadn't noticed at the time. Out of his memory Eth
el's voice came, saying, "Judge, I got to see you alone. I got to tell you something." He tried to bury his memory deep so that his face would not speak.
Kate said, "Well, what was it?"
He had been too late. His mind leaped for safety. "There's something," he said to gain time. "I'm trying to think."
"Well, think!" Her voice was edged and anxious.
"Well--" He had it. "Well, I heard her tell the cops--let's see--she said why couldn't they let her go south. She said she had relatives in San Luis Obispo."
Kate leaned quickly toward him. "Yes?"
"And the cops said it was too damn far."
"You're smart, Joe. Where will you go first?"
"Watsonville," he said. "I got a friend in San Luis. He'll look around for me. I'll give him a ring."
"Joe," she said sharply. "I want this quiet."
"For five hundred you'll get it quiet and quick," said Joe. He felt fine even though her eyes were suited and inspective again. Her next words jarred his stomach loose from his backbone.
"Joe, not to change the subject--does the name Venuta mean anything to you?"
He tried to answer before his throat tightened. "Not a thing," he said.
"Come back as soon as you can," Kate said. "Tell Helen to come in. She'll take over for you."
3
Joe packed his suitcase, went to the depot, and bought a ticket for Watsonville. At Castroville, the first station north, he got off and waited four hours for the Del Monte express from San Francisco to Monterey, which is at the end of a spur line. In Monterey he climbed the stairs of the Central Hotel, registered as John Vicker. He went downstairs and ate a steak at Pop Ernst's, bought a bottle of whisky, and retired to his room.
He took off his shoes and his coat and vest, removed his collar and tie, and lay down on the bed. The whisky and a glass were on the table beside the brass bed. The overhead light shining in his face didn't bother him. He didn't notice it. Methodically he primed his brain with half a tumbler of whisky and then he crossed his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles and he brought out thoughts and impressions and perceptions and instincts and began matching them.
It had been a good job and he had thought he had her fooled. Well, he'd underrated her. But how in hell had she got onto it he was wanted? He thought he might go to Reno or maybe to Seattle. Seaport towns--always good. And then--now wait a minute. Think about it.
Ethel didn't steal nothing. She had something. Kate was scared of Ethel. Five hundred was a lot of dough to dig out a beat-up whore. What Ethel wanted to tell the judge was, number one, true; and, number two, Kate was scared of it. Might be able to use that. Hell!--not with her holding that jailbreak over him. Joe wasn't going to serve out the limit with penalties.
But no harm in thinking about it. Suppose he was to gamble four years against--well, let's say ten grand. Was that a bad bet? No need to decide. She knew it before and didn't turn him in. Suppose she thought he was a good dog.
Maybe Ethel might be a hole-card.
Now--wait--just think about it. Maybe it was the breaks. Maybe he ought to draw his hand and see. But she was so goddam smart. Joe wondered if he could play against her. But how, if he just played along?
Joe sat up and filled his glass full. He turned off his light and raised his shade. And as he drank his whisky he watched a skinny little woman in a bathrobe washing her stockings in a basin in a room on the other side of the air shaft. And the whisky muttered in his ears.
It might be the breaks. God knows, Joe had waited long enough. God knows, he hated the bitch with her sharp little teeth. No need to decide right now.
He raised his window quietly and threw the writing pen from the table against the window across the air shaft. He enjoyed the scene of fear and apprehension before the skinny dame yanked her shade down.
With the third glass of whisky the pint was empty. Joe felt a wish to go out in the street and look the town over. But then his discipline took over. He had made a rule, and kept to it, never to leave his room when he was drinking. That way a man never got in trouble. Trouble meant cops, and cops meant a check-up, and that would surely mean a trip across the bay to San Quentin and no road gang for good behavior this time. He put the street out of his mind.
Joe had another pleasure he saved for times when he was alone, and he was not aware it was a pleasure. He indulged it now. He lay on the brass bed and went back in time over his sullen and miserable childhood and his fretful and vicious growing up. No luck--he never got the breaks. The big shots got the breaks. A few snatch jobs he got away with, but the tray of pocketknives? Cops came right in his house and got him. Then he was on the books and they never let him alone. Guy in Daly City couldn't shag a crate of strawberries off a truck without they'd pick up Joe. In school he didn't have no luck neither. Teachers against him, principal against him. Guy couldn't take that crap. Had to get out.
Out of his memory of bad luck a warm sadness grew, and he pushed it with more memories until the tears came to his eyes and his lips quivered with pity for the lonely lost boy he had been. And here he was now--look at him--a rap against him, working in a whorehouse when other men had homes and cars. They were safe and happy and at night their blinds were pulled down against Joe. He wept quietly until he fell asleep.
Joe got up at ten in the morning and ate a monster breakfast at Pop Ernst's. In the early afternoon he took a bus to Watsonville and played three games of snooker with a friend who came to meet him in answer to a phone call. Joe won the last game and racked his cue. He handed his friend two ten-dollar bills.
"Hell," said his friend, "I don't want your money."
"Take it," said Joe.
"It ain't like I give you anything."
"You give me plenty. You say she ain't here and you're the baby that would know."
"Can't tell me what you want her for?"
"Wilson, I tol' you right first an' I tell you now, I don't know. I'm jus' doing a job of work."
"Well, that's all I can do. Seems like there was this convention--what was it?--dentists, or maybe Owls. I don't know whether she said she was going or I just figured it myself. I got it stuck in my mind. Give Santa Cruz a whirl. Know anybody?"
"I got a few acquaintances," said Joe.
"Look up H. V. Mahler, Hal Mahler. He runs Hal's poolroom. Got a game in back."
"Thanks," said Joe.
"No--look, Joe. I don't want your money."
"It ain't my money--buy a cigar," said Joe.
The bus dropped him two doors from Hal's place. It was suppertime but the stud game was still going. It was an hour before Hal got up to go to the can and Joe could follow and make a connection. Hal peered at Joe with large pale eyes made huge by thick glasses. He buttoned his fly slowly and adjusted his black alpaca sleeve guards and squared his green eyeshade. "Stick around till the game breaks," he said. "Care to sit in?"
"How many playing for you, Hal?"
"Only one."
"I'll play for you."
"Five bucks an hour," said Hal.
"An' ten per cent if I win?"
"Well, okay. Sandy-haired fella Williams is the house."
At one o'clock in the morning Hal and Joe went to Barlow's Grill. "Two rib steaks and french fries. You want soup?" Hal asked Joe.
"No. And no french fries. They bind me up."
"Me too," said Hal. "But I eat them just the same. I don't get enough exercise."
Hal was a silent man until he was eating. He rarely spoke unless his mouth was full. "What's your pitch?" he asked around steak.
"Just a job. I make a hundred bucks and you get twenty-five--okay?"
"Got to have like proof--like papers?"
"No. Be good but I'll get by without them."
"Well, she come in and wants me to steer for her. She wasn't no good. I didn't take twenty a week off her. I probably wouldn't of knew what become of her only Bill Primus seen her in my place and when they found her he come in an' ast me about her. Nice fella, Bill. We
got a nice force here."
Ethel was not a bad woman--lazy, sloppy, but good-hearted. She wanted dignity and importance. She was just not very bright and not very pretty and, because of these two lacks, not very lucky. It would have bothered Ethel if she had known that when they pulled her out of the sand where waves had left her half buried, her skirts were pulled around her ass. She would have liked more dignity.
Hal said, "We got some crazy bohunk bastards in the sardine fleet. Get loaded with ink an' they go nuts. Way I figure, one of them sardine crews took her out an' then jus' pushed her overboard. I don't see how else she'd get in the water."
"Maybe she jumped off the pier?"
"Her?" said Hal through potatoes. "Hell, no! She was too blamed lazy to kill herself. You want to check?"
"If you say it's her, it's her," said Joe, and he pushed a twenty and a five across the table.
Hal rolled the bills like a cigarette and put them in his vest pocket. He cut out the triangle of meat from the rib steak and put it in his mouth. "It was her," he said. "Want a piece of pie?"
Joe meant to sleep until noon but he awakened at seven and lay in bed for quite a long time. He planned not to get back to Salinas until after midnight. He needed more time to think.
When he got up he looked in the mirror and inspected the expression he planned to wear. He wanted to look disappointed but not too disappointed. Kate was so goddam clever. Let her lead. Just follow suit. She was about as wide open as a fist. Joe had to admit that he was scared to death of her.
His caution said to him, "Just go in and tell her and get your five hundred."
And he answered his caution savagely, "Breaks. How many breaks did I ever get? Part of the breaks is knowing a break when you get it. Do I want to be a lousy pimp all my life? Just play it close. Let her do the talking. No harm in that. I can always tell her later like I just found out if it don't go good."
"She could have you in a cell block in six hours flat."
East of Eden Page 56
