by Gil Meynier
The deputy had been standing with his weight first on one foot, then on the other. Now he was leaning against the car. Joe saw him take a look at the speedometer.
“Do you mind if I ask you where you went tonight?”
Joe was busy lighting a cigarette so the deputy talked on.
“We check on these rental cars now and then.”
“Sure,” said Joe. “I got the car out tonight at about seven-thirty...”
He was pretty sure that Bill, back there in the shack, had told the sheriff’s man that much. Probably gave him the speedometer reading, too.
“...and drove around town for a while...then I went out on the Nogales road to show my girl what the country looked like. Came back to town for a drink. Then we went up on ‘A’ Mountain and parked and we sat and talked. You know how it is.”
The deputy grinned.
“Sure gets crowded up there sometimes,” he said.
This was easy. Joe took his time about finishing up.
“Then, seeing I had a lot of mileage left, I drove out toward Sabino Canyon. Got about halfway and turned around, took the girl friend home and here I am.”
The deputy took off his sombrero and mopped the hat-band with his handkerchief.
“Which road did you take on the way to Sabino?” he asked as if to make conversation.
To account for the dust on the car Joe had to say he had taken the River road—the only other road, the one he had taken on his way back to town, was paved all the way. He was glad he remembered the dust.
“Are you sure you took your girl home after you’d been on the River road?”
Joe did not answer right away. The deputy had opened the car door and even if he hadn’t run his finger over the seat anyone could see that there was dust all over it except where Joe had sat, obviously alone when the dust was flying.
“Did I say that?” said Joe.
“That’s what I thought you said,” said the deputy, closing the door and straightening up. “People often make mistakes when they try to tell us what they’ve been doing. Do you know any of the fellows staying at the Bar-O Ranch, off River road? Mostly Italians.”
“No,” said Joe.
“Thought maybe you’d gone out there after taking your girl home.”
“Never even heard of the Bar-O,” said Joe.
“Or any of the boys?”
Joe shook his head. He was going to pretend he’d never met Porotti in the bar.
“The reason I’m asking,” the deputy drawled on, “is that a fellow has a farm on River road and he doesn’t like his new neighbors, the Italians—the “Detroit gangsters,” he calls them. He phoned us a while ago to tell us one of them had nearly run him off the road.”
The deputy got rid of some of his tobacco.
“He was so mad when it happened that he stopped, turned around and followed the other car through the dust clear over to the pavement so he could get the license number.”
Joe began to feel uneasy.
“By the time he got to a phone to call us, he had forgotten the number. He thought the plates said Dealer, but he wasn’t too sure. All rental cars have dealer plates. So...”
“So?” said Joe.
“So all I can tell you is to be careful when you drive.”» “Now, wait a minute,” said Joe, now that he was safe. “I didn’t see any car on the road.”
“Maybe not,” said the deputy. “It could have been one of those Italians.”
There was a silence.
Joe began to walk away but the deputy spoke up again. “That takes care of tonight. You also took the car yesterday. Think you could remember where you went?”
Joe suddenly felt cold. He wondered if he was under any obligation to answer all these questions. It would look bad if he didn’t. Holding on to the thought that he had to place himself as far away as possible from the golf course, he said:
“Well, I drove around town quite a bit. Then I went out toward Nogales...”
“About how far did you go?”
“Oh, I don’t know...maybe eight, ten miles.”
He thought of the splash of broken glass on the road that marked exactly how far he had gone.
“D’you make any stops on the way back?” asked the deputy. And the way he grinned as he asked the question warned Joe that his car might have been noticed in front of the gambling house.
“Well, yes,” said Joe.
“Have any luck?”
“No.”
And that was that. The deputy did not seem to care about the gambling house.
“Then,” Joe continued, “I drove up to that night club on Sixth and parked outside and waited. Thought I might see some friends.”
“See any?”
Joe remembered the squad car.
“No. I drove around town a little more, I guess, and brought the car back and went home.”
“Remember what time it was?”
“I don’t know,” said Joe; “midnight, one o’clock...I don’t carry a watch.”
The deputy nodded his head.
“Lots of people don’t,” he said. “Where do you work?”
“I don’t,” said Joe. “Came here for my health.”
This was an answer he had prepared a long time back. “Health pretty good now?”
“Much better,” said Joe.
“I was in the hospital, myself, when I first came here,” said the deputy.
“Yeah?” said Joe.
“Yeah, my mother didn’t believe in having her babies at home.”
The deputy sheriff laughed at his own joke. He’d pulled it every day this week.
“Well, thanks a lot,” he continued. “I’ll see you again.”
Joe looked at him. What was this see-you-again business? He walked away from the car lot and started for home.
“Why are people picking on me?” he thought. “Why are they always picking on me!”
And as he walked he set himself all sorts of problems. They all dealt with the confusion and defeat of his enemies. Mayhew, Mac, Porotti, the deputy sheriff...and after thinking about it for a few blocks he added Dorry to the list of enemies.
7
OKAY, thought Joe as he woke up the next morning, they’ve been asking for it.
He had lain awake for a long time before going to sleep and had done a lot of thinking.
He yanked down the shades to shut out the sun which had been pouring through his windows for several hours. He saw Mrs. Fred in the yard, still looking at the eroded mound of adobe bricks.
“She gets it, too,” he decided.
He went into the bathroom. He did not wash or shave; he merely combed his hair with his pocket comb, wetting it liberally so that it would stay down.
“I guess I’m not bad-looking,” he thought as he looked at himself in the mirror. He had to be fairly good-looking for Dorry to have fallen for him the way she did. He had decided that he was not in love with her but that it was she, the sucker, who had fallen in love with him. There was no other way to account for the way she had kissed him, long and often, on their first time out.
He went into the kitchen. There was coffee on the stove.
Not caring who had brewed it or for whom it was intended, he helped himself. What was left in the pot he poured down the sink. Through the kitchen window he saw Mayhew, who was contemplating his garden. He was dressed to go out. Probably on his way to the library. He’d be gone most of the morning.
Leaving the kitchen, Joe walked down the hall as far as the curtained alcove. The drape was pulled aside. Mrs. Jard was out. He went back to his room and fished under the bed for a certain shoe. Reaching into the shoe, he pulled out the knotted handkerchief. He took out the rings. He went to the hall closet and picked up a pair of garden gloves. Back in his room, he pulled out of his pocket the roll of adhesive tape he had borrowed from the bathroom. It was two inches wide. From it he cut a piece of tape two inches long. It was not easy with gloves on, but he managed. On the gummy side, in the center o
f the square of tape, he placed one of the rings. He pressed on it and it stayed on. He cut another square of tape for the other ring, the one with the diamonds. He returned to the bathroom, replaced the roll of tape in the cabinet, went down the hall and ducked into Mrs. Jard’s alcove.
He pulled out the top drawer of her dresser. He pulled it out about six inches, enough to make sure, as he slipped his gloved fingers under it, that there was a good half-inch clearance between the underside of the drawer and the runners. He took one of the squares of tape and pressed it against the underside of the drawer. It stuck there nicely. The ring did not make much of a lump. He slid the drawer open and shut a few times. No trouble at all. He planted the other ring to the underside of the second drawer, pushed it shut and went back to his room. On the way, he threw the gloves back into the hall closet.
As he was about to lie down on his bed he suddenly remembered the handkerchief.
Wow! he thought.
He picked it up from the top of his dresser. He thought of tearing it into small shreds and flushing it down the toilet. Then he had a better idea. Standing by the side of the window, he peered into the back yard. Mayhew was deep in conversation with Mrs. Fred. Joe pulled out his pocketknife, stepped onto the chair near the side of the dresser and, with practiced ease, stood up on the dresser. There was a shelf on the wall. There was a similar shelf on the other side of the partition, in Mayhew’s room. The partition was of pine. Joe had carefully checked all the knotholes. He had found that each brown knot was solidly embedded in the pine except the one above the shelf over the dresser. This knot had shrunk enough so that it could be pulled out. Joe had had a good view of Mayhew’s room until the old man had placed a suitcase on the shelf.
He inserted the tip of the blade of his pocketknife into the small crack in the hard brown knot. He twisted it delicately and the knot came out. Through the hole he stuffed the wrinkled handkerchief so that it would fall behind the suitcase. He replaced the knot and climbed down.
Whistling softly, he flapped the moist palms of his hands together, marking the end of a job well done.
Now, to go on, he went into the bathroom and shaved. He came back, put on his good trousers, last night’s shirt and his brown-and-white shoes, the kind the Stringer had worn. Then he went down the hall and out through the front door, which he slammed shut.
That ought to wake her, he thought as the screen also banged shut behind him.
In the telephone booth at the drugstore he looked up the number of the Bar-O and called it.
After a short buzz a male voice answered.
“Stringer there?” Joe asked.
“Who’s calling?”
“Joe.”
“Joe who?”
“Tell him: Joe at the bar last night.’*
“I’ll see.”
Joe waited. A couple of girls in sun-suits came into the drugstore. From the darkness of the booth Joe examined them at leisure. Not bad.
“Hello, Stringer?” he said.
“Yeah.”
Joe was not sure he recognized the voice.
“This is Joe,” he said.
“So they tell me,” said Stringer.
Now Joe identified the voice.
“About that business you were asking about last night, I think I’ve got one.”
There was a silence. Then Stringer said:
“Well, I guess I’m coming in to see you.”
It was Joe’s turn to be silent.
“Pick you up in forty-five minutes,” said Stringer.
“Where?” said Joe.
“Same address your girl friend gave me, isn’t it? By the way, you two...uh...”
Joe knew what was coming, so he said:
“Nah! She don’t mean a thing to me.”
“Good,” said Stringer. “Ask her to come along. We’ll take her swimming.”
Joe heard a click at the other end of the line and that was that.
He went back to the house and knocked at Dorry’s room, opening the door as he knocked. He did not catch her in any interesting stage of undress. Fully clothed, she had said to come in and she did not seem to notice that he had beaten her to the invitation.
“Hello, Joe,” she said.
“Hi. Have you got a bathing suit?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“I got us a swimming date.”
She wanted to know more about it. She seemed to like the idea until he mentioned Porotti.
“Aw, Joe,” she said, “are you sure. .
“Look, I know what I’m doing.”
“Well, all right,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”
“Thanks,” said Joe. “But don’t put yourself out on my account. I just want to talk business with Porotti while you’re swimming.”
The Italian, trim, muscular and tanned in bathing trunks, T-shirt and blue sun glasses, honked for them thirty minutes later. Joe noticed that the long, low touring car of recent vintage had a dealer’s license plate.
Before taking them to the Hermitage, a resort-hotel whose exclusive winter pool was open to all comers during the summer, Stringer stopped at a new Dress Shoppe and insisted on buying Dorry a new bathing suit.
“As a favor to me,” he said to Dorry. “My friend Toni just started in the business and I want to help him out.”
There were no clerks in the Dress Shoppe. Just Toni, fat and sullen, who did not seem to be enjoying himself at all.
Stringer selected a yellow bathing suit and gave it to Dorry.
“Charge it,” he said, laughing, to Toni.
Toni muttered something rather rude and Stringer was still laughing when they got into the car.
“Grand fellow, Toni,” he said.
In a setting of green lawn, red-brick walls, white garden furniture, green-and-yellow awnings, varicolored towels, tanned bodies in bleached suits, shimmering eucalyptus trees and heavily blooming oleanders, the pool, glassy and temporarily void of swimmers, reflected the intense blue of the sky and the white of the towering clouds that rolled in the bright sunlight over the distant mountains.
When Dorry went to the women’s dressing room to change into her new bathing suit, Stringer said:
“Didn’t you bring your trunks?”
“No,” said Joe, “I’m not swimming. Just want to talk to you about something.”
“Okay, okay,” said the Italian, dropping his towel and his sun-glasses on a table, “be right with you.”
He took off his T-shirt and, with four quick steps, dove into the pool.
Joe pulled up a folding canvas chair and sat down. He was conscious of his oyster-colored skin and of the fact that he could not swim at all. He felt uncomfortably hot in the sun. There was shade under a palm-thatched porch effect a few feet away but there was a sign that read: Reserved for Guests of the Hermitage, so he sat in the sun and perspired.
The Italian was a good swimmer. His first dive took him clear across the width of the pool, head down, arms extended. When his hand touched the wall he brought up his feet, pushed, and with three back strokes, spurting water like a whale, he was back where he had started. He swam the length of the pool a couple of times and then floated on his back until Dorry came out.
She can’t swim either, thought Joe as he watched her go down the steps at the shallow end of the pool and wade in until the water was up to her armpits.
The Italian swam over to her and from then on he stayed in the shallow water with her. They laughed, splashed water at each other and fooled around. Every now and then he would disappear underwater and she would wiggle around and splash water at him when he came up. Then they sat on the edge of the pool and kicked their feet. After a while Dorry got up and walked around the pool toward the table. The yellow suit was thin and clung pretty closely. She didn’t seem to know enough to loosen it as she came out of the water.
Stringer watched her go, then he dove in, swam across, lifted himself smoothly over the edge of the pool and caught up with her as she reached t
he table.
“Here, give her your chair,” he said to Joe, “and get us a couple more.”
But Dorry sat on the grass and Stringer, mopping his face, sat down beside her. Joe hadn’t moved. He was beginning not to like the Italian’s manner.
He didn’t move for a long time. He said he didn’t want anything to drink, so that it was Stringer himself who had to get up and go to the bar. He brought back two tall glasses of orange juice. While he was gone Joe said:
“Go back in the pool. I want to talk to him.”
Unsmiling, Dorry said:
“All right, Joe.”
Stringer looked for her when he came back.
“I want to talk to you,” said Joe.
Stringer sat down. Keeping his eyes on Dorry as she waded slowly around by herself, the Italian said, between sips of orange juice:
“Okay. What’ve you got?”
“A house,” said Joe.
He thought the Italian was going to hit him as he abruptly turned to face him and put his glass down on the table.
“You got me wrong,” the Italian said.
“What do you mean?” said Joe.
“I don’t go for houses.”
“But everybody’s buying houses now. With everybody looking for a place to live...”
Stringer looked at Joe with a puzzled expression, then he began to smile.
“Oh! you mean a house to live in.”
“Sure,” said Joe.
“That’s different. What about this house?”
And Joe explained about this fine old home he was living in. Stringer could buy it. They could throw everybody out, except maybe Dorry. Then they would have rooms to rent. He told him about Mayhew, who wasn’t paying anything, and Mrs. Jard, who was nothing but an old cleaning woman, and Mrs. Fred.
The Italian shook his head.
“I don’t like to throw old ladies out,” he said.
Well, maybe they wouldn’t throw the old ladies out. Joe thought he could have them double up in one of the small rooms.
“Then,” Joe said, “we could get other people to move in.”
There was Mac, who was living in a hotel. He’d move in.
“Who’s Mac?” said Stringer.
