I held her tight and smiled down at her. “I’m the guy who is writing a book. Remember me?”
She looked up at me, her eyes grave in the moonlight, and shook her head from side to side. “No, Tom. You’re not writing a book. Your publishers have never heard of you. No man named Al Justin has ever worked for them.”
I sat very still, and something inside of me turned to ice. I had guessed the reactions of Fosting, but I hadn’t taken into account the emotional reflexes of a woman.
Before I could answer, she said, “I don’t want anything to hurt him, Tom.”
“Who wants to hurt him?” I said.
“I think you do. You were at home in that gambling place, Tom. You were at home with those people. I—I don’t know what to think. There’s something fine and clean and decent about Jim Fosting. And there’s something about you as black as the grave.”
It jolted me. I tried to laugh it off. “You make me sound like a fiend!”
“Maybe you are, Tom,” she said softly.
“Then why are you here?” I asked her, tightening my arms to show her what I meant.
Her voice was broken. “I don’t know, Tom. I don’t know. I don’t trust you and I don’t love you and yet I can’t help …”
I tilted her chin up and kissed her again. She was eager in my arms, and a dull roaring obscured my hearing. I was conscious only of her, and then, as from a great distance, I could hear her saying, half moan, half sob, “No—no—no—no …”
I fought my way back to sanity and opened the car door. I stood out in the night, breathing in the cool air in great gulps. When I turned and smiled at her, her face was pale but composed.
“Thank you,” she said in a little-girl voice.
I knew it was time to go back. There was work to do. I left her at her door, kissed her lightly on the lips and walked back out to the waiting car.
Chowder had bribed his way into my room. He was sitting on the bed, waiting for me. One of the punks he collects was standing by the bureau, cleaning his nails with my file.
After I shut the door, Chowder said, “The boss thought you were taking too long, Wally. He wants it for tomorrow.”
“Okay, he gets it for tomorrow. Bright and early,” I said.
Chowder liked the plan I outlined. The best plans are the simple ones. This was simpler than most. Three blocks from the hotel was a small freight depot. Big trucks. Fosting left the hotel at seven sharp every morning. To get to the City Hall, he walked down a street with a narrow sidewalk, walled with red brick buildings.
At a quarter to seven there was only one man in the freight depot, a driver who came to hook his tractor onto a trailer full of groceries.
The plan was to get into the freight yard, sap the driver, hoist him into the cab and time it to move up over the sidewalk and crush Fosting against the bricks. The man handling it, which would be me, could then pull the unconscious driver over under the wheel, slip out and make like he was a witness.
The driver’s lack of memory would be taken to be the result of concussion. Shock amnesia. Routine accident. Too bad.
Chowder questioned me in detail. The punk filed his nails as he listened. I explained how the man with the sap could hide just inside the freight-yard gate and lay it gently over the driver’s ear as he came in. He’d never be seen.
All the time I was telling Chowder, I was thinking of Janet. She was a clean kid, a good kid. Fosting, in spite of the age difference, would be right for her.
But there wouldn’t be any more Fosting. And if there was the slightest slip, she knew enough to point the finger right at me. And that wasn’t good.
Chowder had a bottle and he kept nipping at it. He told me his room was right down the hall.
I couldn’t stop thinking of Janet, of the smell of her hair and the taste of her lips.
“What’s the matter with you?” Chowder asked. “You nervous?”
I was pacing around. I stopped and grinned at him. “Should I be?”
“I don’t know. You look edgy to me, pal. I hope you can handle this picnic okay. The front office wouldn’t want any slips.”
“But you wouldn’t mind, would you?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You’d like to see me nailed for it, wouldn’t you, Chowder?”
He sulked. “Ah, shove it, Wally.”
He sat on the bed and I could see that he was getting an idea. It was slow coming to him, and he had to nibble on it for some time. Then, when he had it set, he looked up at me without expression.
“You’re too nervous for the job, Wally,” he said.
I got it right away. “That’s right. Things weren’t going good. You came down here. Poor old Wally had a good plan lined up, but no guts. So you took over. Yep, Wally is all right for dreaming up things, but no follow-through. That means Wally wouldn’t ever fit into a responsible position like yours. Very cute. The point is, Chowder, how do you make it stick?”
Like a sucker, I had let the punk ease around behind me. I caught the signal that Chowder gave him, I ducked, and the sap nearly tore my ear off. I spun and he gave it to me, backhand across my mouth. I felt the teeth give as I dropped toward the floor. I never felt myself hit the floor.
When I came out of it, I was on the bed. Chowder was in the chair. His jaw sagged open and he was snoring. My ankles were tied together and my wrists were tied to the two bedposts at the head of the bed. Some kind character had stuffed a pair of my soiled socks in my mouth and tied them in place with a necktie. One end of a sock stuck out just far enough so I could see the pattern when I looked down my nose.
My head hurt just enough so that I knew the punk had sapped me again as I was falling.
Chowder slept like he’d had a lot of practice. I had a lot of time to think. And none of the thoughts were good. I knew that Chowder wouldn’t do the job himself. He’d get the punk to do it. Then he’d pay off the punk and say he did it. If it went wrong, the punk would be on a limb and Chowder would be out of town.
The organization would never forgive me after a foul-up like that. I’d never be paid more than muscle rates.
And yet, those reasons didn’t seem to be enough for the way I felt. I felt dirty all the way through—as dirty as that pair of socks that kept me from waking up Chowder.
The feeling of being dirty was all tied up with Janet Calder. It was as though I had been living in a box and she had torn off one wall and let some light in so I could see my own pigpen.
There aren’t any other words to explain it.
I stayed right there, thinking thoughts that hurt, until, as the windows started to get gray with dawn and the light from the lamp began to look watery and pale, there was the sound of a key in the lock, and the punk came in. He was a dark kid, with a weak mouth and long sideburns.
He saw that my eyes were open and he said, “Good morning, Glory!”
I got a look at his eyes and saw that he was stoned. Chowder was a damn fool to use a snowbird for that kind of a deal.
He shook Chowder, and the broad white face slowly came back to life, the eyes squinting at the light, the little upside-down U of a mouth working as though there was a bad taste inside.
“Whatsa time?” he demanded.
“Six. I just got back from the freight yard. I can get in okay. Everything set?”
“Sure. Get on your horse. Don’t let the driver see you when you sap him. You saw the street. And I showed you the picture of Fosting. Cruise along behind him until the street is empty. Then go in fast, Joey.”
Joey left. Chowder squinted at me and heaved himself out of the chair. He tested the neckties he had used to tie my wrists. Fifteen-dollar ties. And he had soaked them in water to get the knots tight enough. He cuffed me alongside the head, making my ear ring.
Then he went into the bathroom and pulled the door shut. I pulled hard, but those were good ties.
They hadn’t tied my ankles to the footboard. They had just tied them together.
&
nbsp; I swung my legs up over my head until I was standing on the back of my neck. I got my toes on the headboard and pushed. The headboard was a good foot from the wall. They had moved the bed out, apparently, to fasten the knots and hadn’t pushed it back.
I got my numb fingers wrapped around the posts.
As I pushed with my legs, wood splintered and with a sudden, startling crash the whole pillow end of the bed dropped onto the floor.
I rolled up onto my feet, bringing the headboard with me. I held it above my head. I struggled for balance, made one hop toward the bathroom door. It was a good thing the room was small.
The bathroom door swung open and a startled Chowder ran out. I swung down with all my strength and the edge of the headboard hit him right at where his hairline would have been if he’d had hair on top.
He went back into the bathroom faster than he had come out. He slid across the short tiled space and piled up half under the john. I turned sideways to get the headboard into the bathroom and hopped in. When I got close enough to him, I jumped up in the air and came down on his face with my heels. It had to be that way because my ankles were tied together. The bad footing spilled me, and I hurt my back as I fell.
I soon found out that I couldn’t roll back up onto my feet in that restricted space. On my fanny, I inched over to the sink, reached up and knocked my razor off the shelf above the sink, using the leg of the headboard. It took me a long time to get my numb fingers to work properly so that I could open the razor. The blade fell out. I managed to pick it up, wedge it on end in a crack between two of the tiles. In the process of slashing the damp necktie, I took a piece out of my wrist.
With one hand free, I cut the other one loose, and freed my ankles.
Chowder had stopped worrying about this world. I weigh two hundred and five. Being too eager to keep him out of action for a little while, I had put him out for a long, long while—forever.
By the time I was ready to leave, it was ten minutes of seven. Knowing Chowder’s habits, I felt around his pulpy middle, and felt the hard butt of the belly gun that he kept wedged under his belt. It had no trigger guard, no sights and a barrel about an inch and a half long. But it threw a .38 slug.
I was telling myself that nobody was going to queer me with the front office by knocking off somebody in the method that I was going to use.
But I wasn’t believing the words I was telling myself.
They had made me stand to hear the fat jury foreman yell out the verdict. Even though I knew what it was going to be, it still sounded much worse than any words are supposed to sound.
The lawyer assigned to me had done his best, but there was too little for him to work with. Even if I’d told him the whole story, he wouldn’t have had enough to go on. He was willing, but he knew when he was licked.
Something was holding me up, but I didn’t know what it was.
The case had been pretty simple. I’d made no attempt to cover my tracks as far as Chowder was concerned. A splinter of his cheekbone had been driven down into the brain. My heel marks were on the flesh of his face, and they had found blood on my heels.
There had even been witnesses to the second murder. Fosting was a half block ahead of me. The big red tractor-trailer had come roaring along, not too fast. Not too fast to keep me from angling over and jumping up on the driver’s side.
Ahead was Fosting. He didn’t turn until the slugs from the .38, at close range, broke Joey’s head like a rotten melon.
Fosting turned as the truck bore down on him. I saw the comprehension, the sudden realization in his face …
A man with sweat stains at his armpits came over to me and took my arm and urged me gently toward the door where I was supposed to go out. The judge had finished mumbling over me. The jury faces had a sick, yet satisfied look. “I sure hate to do this but I’m doing my duty.” That kind of look.
He was urging me toward the door over at the side. Beyond that door was the long corridor, the stairs, the short sidewalk and the waiting police car. And a few months beyond the police car, hazy, and yet promising to grow much clearer, was the picture of a squat chair, a sullen, brooding chair.
A waiting chair.
At the doorway, I turned and looked back at the courtroom. Every day of the trial she had been there. Alone. White, white face and blue-violet eyes. Wide, wide eyes. Lips I had kissed.
Maybe I looked toward her for three seconds before the guy got my arm again. Beside her was the lean leathery face of James Fosting. He had made it for the last day. The kiss-off. I wondered what he was thinking. He knew that I had wrenched the truck out of the course that would have killed him. Yet he had to cover me, to force me to drop Chowder’s belly gun onto the asphalt.
They were sitting very close together. Her lips formed a word. “Thanks.”
And suddenly it seemed as if a lot of things were worthwhile.
But you can’t go soft. Out in the hallway the guard offered me a cigarette. I said, “Don’t smoke, friend. I’ve got none of the minor vices.”
As usual, the tired old gag worked. And I was in a slot to give it a little more impact than it usually had.
He caught on and he repeated the tag line. “None of the minor vices.” The other guard was waiting in the hall.
Between the two of them I walked down toward the stairs.
He was giggling so that his fat belly shook. “This guy’s got none of the minor vices, Harry,” he said, gasping, because, to him, it seemed like a very good joke.
The High Gray Walls of Hate
The night heat was a violence that reflected up from the pavements, bounced off the stone walls of the city. Sleep was a thing to be trapped and captured on the fire escape, under the still trees in the park. The tires of the cars made a ripping, sticky sound on the asphalt.
James Forbes walked slowly through the streets of the city. He carried the coat to the suit they had given him over his arm. The cheap white shirt was plastered to his body, outlining the lean strength of his chest and back. His sleeves were rolled up tightly over brown biceps. He wore no hat.
Over his head the neon hummed and flickered. Bar and Grill … Eat … All Legal Beverages … Hostesses … Try Your Luck … Eat … Cocktail Lounge … Topless Barmaids …
A haze had come in from the river with the night heat, making molten halos around the signs.
There was no trace of expression on his face. They had taught him not to show expression. They had taught him that a trace of expression lands you in solitary, if you’re a new one.
The fields had been long and flat and hot, the rows of vegetables stretching into infinity, wavering in the dance of heat waves. The calluses were as hard as leather on his palms.
“Yes, Mr. Commissioner, the prison commissary is almost entirely self-sustaining. Except for the staples like sugar, of course. It does them good to work out in the open air. Yes, you could call it a release.”
Across James Forbes’s temple was a fine white line. A prison screw, sun-touched, had yanked the hoe away from him and struck him down with it. He remembered and could taste again the blood and earth that caked his lips.
The people of the city sat on the high steps of the houses that stood, shoulder to shoulder, beyond the sidewalk. The doughy women fanned themselves and the men drank the cool beer, wiping their mouths with the backs of laborers’ hands. The only notice they took of James Forbes was to wait until he passed before spitting out onto the sidewalk. Just a young guy walking. That’s all. Just walking through the night heat. Probably been stood up by his girl. Got a nice suntan—you notice?
But there were a few smart ones who sat and drank the beer on the high steps. They saw the stuff of which the suit was made and knew where it came from. They saw the cut of the cheap white shirt and remembered the stink of the prison laundry. They saw the brown face with no trace of expression. Those smart ones drank deeply of their beer, remembered the gray of concrete and uniform, the blind misery of the sun … and they were silent.
“Whadya stop talkin’ for, Joe? Whassa matter, honey?”
The measured snarl. “Shaddup, woman!”
“Sure, Joe. Gee, I ain’t done nothin’. Whassa matter?”
“Shaddup, I said!”
The contemptuous retreat, climbing up through the floors of ammonia salts and the stink of many people to lie sleepless and sweating on the gray sheets and remember the sound of a thousand feet in prison shoes stamping to a halt before the cell doors. The bitter-bright clang of the closing doors. The snug chunk of the lugs entering the doorframes as the screw on the tier spun the big wheel.
Lie in the heat with the sweat running across your ribs and dig your fingers into your palms and curse them. Remember the look of the young one that went by. Remember his “just out” look. Remember when they gave you your name back and every cop on every corner was a guy who ached to smash what was left of your teeth down your throat.
James Forbes walked the night streets, his feet scuffing through the candy wrappers, the chewed cigar butts, the cellophane off the cigarettes, the clotted spittle, and somehow he kept his eyes straight ahead and resisted the impulse to look behind him.
A woman with frizzed blond hair and a body that sagged under her bright cheap dress stepped out of a doorway and said, “Wanna party, chum?”
Barely moving his lips, he said one word.
As he walked slowly on, she screamed obscenities after him. Two boys leaning against a darkened storefront laughed at her. She turned on them as Forbes walked on. Behind him, he heard her laugh.
He walked and he heard George’s heavy voice. George, round and happy and doing a twenty for second degree. George was back there behind the walls and he’d be right there for ten more years. I’ll be forty then, Forbes thought with a sense of shock, and felt as though he should do something for George somehow to make it easier.
Then he could hear George’s soft and heavy voice. “You’re jus’ heah for a little time, boy. Just a little time. But they somehow suck the guts out of you in a little time. Why, when I come in I was goin’ a head back as soon as I got out an’ I was goin’ to separate the head from the neck of my fine fren ‘at turned me in. I surely was, boy. Now I’m one scared boy. When I get out, I’m walkin’ that chalk line. I surely am. I won’t be no trouble to noooobody. No sir! I’m leavin’ my guts in heah. So’ll you, boy. So’ll you.”
More Good Old Stuff Page 30
