Whom Gods Destroy

by Clifton Adams

  He still didn't say a thing. Those eyes weren't so ugly now. They were frightened eyes.

  “All right, Foley! For God's sake, all right!”

  I breathed deeply. The sudden fury began to burn out.

  Barney wasn't boss any more. I was.

  I said, “I'm glad we finally understand each other. Now about these cribs. Do I get protection for them?”

  I loosened my hold on him then let him go. He tried to pull himself together, but it was a tough job. He knew that somehow, there in that fit of anger, he had lost the upper hand.

  “Foley, you don't know how it is.” He was almost pleading. “The chief of police would be run out of town if we allowed cribs to operate. The sheriff would be tarred and feathered. The churches run this state, and prostitution is one thing the churches can't stand. Forget it, Foley—try anything else, but forget that.”

  “I've decided,” I said, “so there's no use talking about it.”

  I got back in the car. He was still talking as I drove out of the yard.

  14

  “ROY, IS SOMETHING bothering you?”

  “Nothing's bothering me. I'm fine.”

  Sure I was fine. I had the cribs going, collecting two hundred dollars a day from the girls. I had two dice tables in another cabin and they were averaging a hundred a day. On top of that, there was the whisky, and I was gradually squeezing Kingkade out of Big Prairie.

  At this rate I'd have the county in my hip pocket within a year.

  Still, for two days I'd done nothing but pace the floor and drink.

  “Do you want a drink?” I said.

  “All right,” Vida, curled up on the apartment couch, watched me with those slanted eyes as I got ice out of the refrigerator and brought it in to the portable bar in the sitting room.

  It was just getting dark outside. I pulled the blinds and snapped on a table lamp, then I downed my drink in one gulp and went back for a refill. I could feel Vida watching me.

  “For God's sake,” I said, “can't you look at something else for a minute? You give me the creeps.”

  “I'm sorry, Roy,” she said softly. “I didn't mean to disturb you.”

  I was sorry the minute I had said it. I went over to the couch, sat down beside her and put my arm around her. “Maybe I have got a case of nerves at that,” I said. “I didn't mean to blow off that way.”

  “It's all right—”

  I pulled her close to me and held her. I loved her—I knew that as well as I knew anything. But something else kept gnawing at me, and not even the warmth of Vida's body could stop it.

  “Roy—” She was looking up at me expectantly, her damp red mouth parted slightly.

  I said, “I guess I don't feel so good tonight,” and got up. I could see disappointment in her eyes as I went over to get another drink. If the gnawing would only stop. What's wrong with me, anyway? I kept thinking. What is it that makes people step to one side when they see me coming, like I had some kind of rotten disease. Hell, I already had more money, more power than Sid had ever dreamed of. But they didn't take me in, the way they had Sid. Seaward didn't even invite me to his parties.

  “I think I'll go out for a while,” I said. “Maybe some fresh air will do me good.”

  Vida nodded, her eyes still faintly puzzled.

  I took her face in my hands and kissed her hard. “I love you, Vida.” Then I went out.

  I drove around for maybe a half hour, and an idea began to jell. I figured it out in my mind, deciding just exactly what I would do and what I would say. Then I went to a drugstore and used the phone.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice slightly impatient.

  “Hello, Lola, this is Roy Foley.”

  It wasn't exactly the way I had planned it, but it was effective. I could hear the whistle of her breath as she dragged it in sharply.

  I said, “Don't hang up, Lola. If you do, I'll just come out to your house.”

  There was a slight jar in my ear and I guessed that she had put her hand over the mouthpiece. Then she hissed, “Speak quickly. What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you. Meet me in a half hour at 1114 River Street—that's the Red Ball Tourist Courts.”

  “It's impossible!” she hissed.

  “It's about a tape recording. You know the one I mean.”

  “Wait!” The word came like a pistol shot. “All right, 1114 River Street. I warn you, though, I don't have much money, and I can't get any until the banks open tomorrow.”

  “Never mind the money.”

  I hung up and sat there in the phone booth for almost five minutes, thinking, Crawl, Lola! Goddamn you, crawl!

  Finally I went back to the car and headed south toward the river. I felt head and shoulders above the tallest man in the world. I was drunk. But not from liquor.

  The cribs were doing a good business when I got there. Four or five cars were parked inside the horseshoe formed by the cabins. I walked straight down toward an end cabin where an overalled factory worker was just coming out.

  Without bothering to knock, I pushed the door open and went in. Rose was in her work clothes, black lace pants and brassiere. She was straightening the bed, and she looked up briefly, without surprise.

  I grinned at her. “I want to borrow your cabin for a while.”

  “When I pay twenty-five a day for it?” she said indignantly.

  “All right, I'll knock off the rent for today. Get your clothes on and go to a movie or something.”

  She got her dress on, managing somehow to look more undressed than she had in just the pants and brassiere.

  “Remember, no rent for today.”

  “I'll remember.”

  Rose went out and I stayed there in the cabin for a minute. It would be hard to find a crummier place. A nine-by-twelve room with worn linoleum on the floor, gawdy paper on the walls, dirty and peeling. A Lysol-smelling bathroom in one corner. A naked electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling, with a piece of string tied to the end of the chain pull switch. The thin mattressed double bed sagged in the center, and, even before I tried it with my hand, I knew it would be noisy. A cheap dresser and a straight chair took care of the furniture. It was a shock when I looked in the dresser mirror. I had somehow imagined that I would look different simply because it was Rose's mirror—but the face that looked back at me was the same. Clean shaven, hair neatly trimmed, tie straight, collar immaculately white. Instinctively, I touched the lapel of my suit and felt the softness of Oxford flannel. A hundred and eighty dollars worth of suit, cut by an artist, and it gave me a good feeling to know that I had nine more of them in my closet at the apartment.

  The half-hour time limit had about five minutes to go when the black Cadillac pulled up in front of the office shack where I was waiting. I walked over and said, “You're on time, Lola. I'm glad of that.”

  She grasped the steering wheel as though she were trying to break it, then, she pressed her hands to her face. Suddenly she reached forward to turn the ignition.

  I said, “Just a minute, Lola,” and her hand stopped in mid-air. “Give me time to say something, then if you still feel like running, you can run.” I waited while she took a long, shuddering breath. But she didn't make another move toward the switch. “All right, that's better. You know about Sid's murder, and you know the part your husband played in it. Now the thing to do is talk sensibly.”

  “What do you want?” she asked tightly. “How much?”

  “I don't think we're thinking along the same line. I've got a cabin—maybe we can get it straightened out over there.”

  I opened the car door and she got out woodenly. I started to take her arm but she shrank away. “This way,” I said, and started walking toward Rose's crib, Lola following behind me.

  Until then, I guess, she had been too angry to realize where she was. But she caught on quick enough when she saw the near-naked girls watching us from the open doorways.

  “In here,” I said.

  She went in, half stu
mbling. She grasped the edge of the dresser as I closed the door, fighting her shame. The soundless struggle went on for a full minute or more—then, at last, she got hold of herself. Finally she looked at me.

  Her face was distorted with hate, but she was still beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes—a ridiculous arrangement of ribbon and straw sitting almost on her forehead. Her suit was a soft gray shantung, straight-hanging and severely tailored, looking as if its principal function was to conceal the fact that its wearer was a woman. If that was the case, it failed on Lola. She was a woman all right. And, God, how I hated her.

  “How much?” she asked, and her voice was cold and steady now. “How much do you want?”

  I tried to smile, but my face was like stone.

  “... I'm not sure yet. Your reputation, maybe. Your husband's career.”

  I watched the blood drain from her beautiful, perfectly made-up, face.

  “You wouldn't dare!”

  I knew who was holding the whip now. “I wouldn't dare ruin your husband's career? Lola, you don't know how much I hate you. You can't even guess to what length I would go to hurt you. And that would hurt you, wouldn't it, Lola? Ruining your husband? You would never get to live in the governor's mansion. That would be bad, wouldn't it?”

  She was beginning to lose some of her poise. “You'd really do it, wouldn't you?” she said wearily. “Even if you died for it.” Then, for a moment, she almost went to pieces. “But why! What have I ever done to you!”

  “You laughed,” I said. “One night,—long ago. You laughed again.” And I was very calm now. “Remember the election night party at Barney Seaward's? And you buried my old man. You knew I didn't have the money for it, and you did it just to make me look cheap. How does it feel to be God?” I said.

  And she stared at me with a touch of hysteria in her eyes. “You are crazy!” she whispered. “Your brain is sick. How am I going to make you believe that I've never hated you?”

  “You could beg,” I said, “You could get down on the floor and crawl. But I still wouldn't believe you. I'd never believe you.”

  A long moment went by and we said nothing. I looked into her eyes and saw the fight go out, the way it had gone out of Sid's eyes, out of Barney's. I got out a cigarette, sat on the edge of the bed and lit it.

  “Roy Foley!” she said abruptly. She threw her head back and laughed, and the sound of it shot coldness through me. “The great Roy Foley! Do you know what you are?” She turned suddenly, facing me. “You're dirt! You're filth and crudeness and ignorance and everything else that is unspeakable and comes from places like Burk Street. I never hated you because you were never worth hating, but I despised you the way I despise all things that are never quite clean.” She looked wildly about her. “Look at this place. What do they call them? Cribs? A place for whores!” And she laughed again. “A whore-master! That's what you were always meant to be, from the first!”

  “Now we understand each other, Lola.”

  “What do you want? What will it take to satisfy you?”

  “Don't you know, Lola?”

  Understanding came slowly. She raised her head and looked at me for perhaps for a full minute before anything happened. Then, slowly, the color began rising to her cheeks.

  “No.”

  “All right, Lola. The choice is yours.” I got my hat and started for the door.

  She stood there frozen. “What are—you going to do?”

  “About the recording? A copy will go to the Crime Bureau in Oklahoma City. Tomorrow some Bureau agents will pick me up and charge me with murder—and along with me, they'll take Seaward and your husband. There'll be a big story about it in the paper. Later, they'll take the three of us to McAlister and strap us into the two-thousand volt chair and that will be the end of it for us. But not for you, Lola. It will never be over for you as long as you live.”

  “Damn you!” she said hoarsely. “Oh, goddamn you!”

  I had the doorknob in my hand. I turned it and started to go out when she said:

  “Wait...”

  When I turned she had taken off her hat, her face like stone. She began unbuttoning her suit jacket. I closed the door, then I went over to the bed and sat down.

  She didn't ask me to turn out the light. Standing in the center of the room, in the whitish glare of the light, she took off the jacket and hung it over the back of the cabin's lone chair. She unbuttoned her blouse, shrugged it away from her pale shoulders, then carefully placed it over the jacket. The skirt was next. There wasn't the slightest hesitation as she took the bottom of her slip and pulled it over her head.

  The only sound in the room was the whisper of her clothes as she took them off. She didn't look at me. Her eyes seemed to be turned in, and I had the feeling that she had somehow convinced herself that this thing wasn't really happening at all.

  The whole thing was so cold and matter-of-fact that it was hard to believe that she was actually standing in front of me, naked.

  “Is this what you want?” she asked flatly.

  I looked up at her, then took off my hat and sailed it toward the dresser.

  “Yes.”

  I touched the flatness of her belly, feeling her cringe. I moved my fingers down her thighs. Where I touched her, the skin crawled.

  “Lie down,” I said.

  Without a word, she sat on the edge of the bed, and then lay back on the soiled spread, her body rigid. She made a small, tortured sound as I put my hands on her again, and not until that moment did I realize that she wanted it. In spite of herself, in spite of her hate. She had it settled in her mind that it was going to happen, and now—God knew why, unless it was simply because her husband wasn't man enough for her—but at that moment I knew it as well as I had ever known anything. She wanted me; the animal part of her craved it while the rest of her hated it.

  I kept my hands on her. She made that sound again and raised her arms and they crawled like twin white snakes around my neck.

  Suddenly I laughed. I beat her arms away and stood up and let it roll out of me, all the hatred and frustration and anger coming out with the laughter. As I walked out of the crib I heard her whispering, “God, how I hate you! Oh, God, how I hate you!” I was still laughing.

  It was past midnight when I finally got back to the apartment.

  Vida was in bed but still awake when I came in.

  “Do you feel better?” she asked.

  “I feel fine.” I sat on the edge of the bed and took her in my arms and pressed my face to the softness of her hair. “Vida, I know I haven't been any good to live with lately, but all that's over now.”

  She took my face in her hands and looked at me. I think she knew that Lola had something to do with it, but she didn't ask questions. “I'm glad you're back,” she said. “That's enough for me.”

  It wasn't until then that I saw a difference in the way she looked at me—a shaded worry deep behind the blue-ness of her eyes.

  “Is anything wrong, Vida? Are you mad because I walked off tonight, the way I did?”

  She shook her head. “You know it isn't that. It's just something I feel. And a little of what I hear and see. It scares me. They're out to get you, Roy—Seaward, Kingkade, McErulur.”

  I laughed, but it didn't sound quite right. “Is that all that's bothering you? Sure they hate me, all of them, but they're not going to get out of line unless Seaward tells them to. And Seaward's not going to do that—not unless he's got a craving to try out the two-thousand-volt chair up at McAlister.”

  She had never asked me about the hold I had on Seaward—maybe she was afraid to. “Forget about it,” I said. “There's nothing to worry about.”

  But was there? Separately I had beaten them—Seaward, Paul Keating, even Lola. But if they banded together, if they really were out to get me ... I thought, maybe I've gone too far. Barney is beaten now, but he can still be dangerous. As long as he can hate, he's capable of ruining me. Maybe I should close the cribs and give in a little to Kingkade and try
to keep things smoothed over. But I knew I wouldn't. If I showed a weakness now they would be on me like wolves. When you climb ambition's ladder there's no backing down. As you go up, they take the rungs out behind you. You keep climbing, or you fall. If I took my foot off Seaward's neck, he, would tear my throat open. And there was Lola, too. Even now—and I was just beginning to understand this—I wasn't free of her.

  The next conclusion in that chain of reasoning was even more bitter to swallow—I would never be free of her for the rest of my life.

  Even now, only a short time after I had pulled her down with me, I found myself wondering if it had really happened. By morning the vague doubt would be in full bloom. By the next evening it would no longer be doubt at all. It would be stark disbelief. I had to see her. I had to stand above her and look down on her and laugh at her, night after night.

  So it was time for a new decision—and the decision was already made. Reach, reach high, grasp for the next rung on the ladder.

  It was almost daylight when I finally got to sleep. When I awoke it was late in the morning and Vida had been up for a long time. I could hear her in the kitchen as I came out of the shower and got the things out to shave. As I lathered my face I saw myself grinning faintly in the mirror. I felt a lot better, now that I had things settled in my mind. To reach the next rung of the ladder I was going to have to knock somebody down, and I had already decided who it was going to be. It was going to be Joe Kingkade.

  I went into the kitchen where Vida had the coffee poured and the cream and sugar set out. I kissed her and she knew I meant it.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Sleep is what I needed.”

  Her face was sober as she sat across from me and poured more coffee. “Roy,” she said suddenly, “do you remember what I said last night?”

  “About Seaward and the others? Sure. I've decided to do something about it.”

  She didn't speak until she got cream and sugar in her coffee. It seemed to take her a long time. “What did you decide, Roy?”

  “The first thing I'm going to do is move Joe Kingkade out of Big Prairie. The town's not big enough for two retailers. I should have done it a long time ago. After that—” I played with the idea. “After that maybe I'll move Barney Seaward out, too. Who knows?”