Canvas Coffin

by Gault, William Campbell

  The boys were playing in the kitchen tonight. They all looked up and smiled, and Max said, “Good evening, love birds.”

  Chapter XI

  I COULDN’T GET TO SLEEP that night. Too much had happened this past week. I felt crowded and edgy. Tomorrow was Sunday, and the scribes would be here, watching me work.

  Why couldn’t Sally and I get along? Why did we have to scratch at each other all the time? From the direction of the living-room, I heard Tony laugh.

  Tony could always laugh, broke as he was. Maybe being broke is one of the requirements for laughter. And knowing you’re good, knowing there isn’t a man in your division you couldn’t beat if you wanted to. And then not particularly wanting to.

  I wondered how many deals Tony had made. And Charley? Charley had a rep as an honest fighter, but that Giani farce was too much to swallow.

  I thought of Max, who’d been a happy man the past few years and was now getting more irritable by the minute. And Jest, with his soft, quiet poise. I thought of the soul-sick Ruth Gonzales, and I thought of Brenda Vane.

  How many horizontal encounters had she had in that big bed with the maroon sheets? And in other beds and couches and davenports and parked cars and dark fields? For love or money, in loathing and ecstasy, in pain and peace. What she offered was a product constantly in demand, and she didn’t ask for a lifetime contract.

  Fighting, they say, is a cruel trade. Being a woman can be a crueler one, both ways. Man and woman, that was the real battle of the century, of any century.

  Which brought me back to Sally, which would bring no sleep.

  Harry Bevilaqua, Paul D’Amico, Sergeant Sands and Sergeant Nolan, Johnny, the landlady, the hotel clerk, Vickie and Vera, George and Sam Wald, Michael Lord, and the dead Noodles. The seals and the windmills. The windmills, a pair of them, went around and around and around and around —

  A bright room and lassitude and the sound of water. Even in the better California homes, you can always hear the water in the pipes. Maybe the pressure is too high, or the pipes too small, but you can always hear the water.

  I heard Sally talking quietly to Max, right outside my door. “Why not let him sleep?”

  “I’m awake,” I called. “I’ll be up and out pretty soon.”

  Dopey, dead, weary. A warm shower and then cooler, but it didn’t help much. An ache in the knees, a tiredness in the shoulders, a defeat in the mind.

  Fruit juice and milk and eggs. Tony and Charley gabbled; the rest of us were quiet.

  Charley asked me, “You want us to pull ‘em, today, Luke? You want us to miss?”

  “You won’t need to,” I said.

  “We don’t want to make you look bad in front of the customers,” Tony said. “I hear some local pride is coming in for a couple rounds, too.”

  I looked at Max.

  “Royal Lincoln,” Max said.

  A hitter, and a light-heavy, a Negro lad who could wallop.

  “Kind of early for that, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Never too early to know,” Max said. “You can always sprain an ankle or something.”

  “He’s way past his peak,” Charley said. “He’s out of shape.”

  Scarpa chuckled. “Sure, and he hits like Max Baer used to. Don’t forget to duck, Luke. Or let Charley go with him.”

  “He’d be too much for Charley,” I said. “And you, too, Tony. I’ll handle him.”

  Tony chuckled again and shook his head. Charley’s face showed nothing.

  It was the kind of day Sunday should be, clear and warm, and we drew a good crowd. I didn’t go up against Tony; just Charley and the black boy, Royal Lincoln. Charley opened the show.

  He didn’t miss a trick, butting, thumbing, heeling me, clowning, clinching, switch hitting.

  In the middle of the second, in the clinch, I told him, “Don’t get too cute, Charley.”

  He put a shoulder into my chin, and shoved.

  I found his right foot with my left, clamped it down, and slammed a hook in under the ribs. He started to crowd me, and I backed off and caught him with a clean right hand on the break.

  A murmur went through the crowd, and the bell rang.

  Jest was smiling, wiping off my face. Max was over talking to Charley.

  “Charley must have gone crazy,” I said. “What’s his angle?”

  Jest said quietly, “D’Amico’s out there. Maybe Max wants to show him we’re ready for anything.”

  “The less we show D’Amico, the better,” I said.

  Jest shrugged, toweling my shoulders, the back of my neck, my chest. I turned to look over the crowd.

  Two rows deep all around the ring, and some standing in small groups farther out. One group of two seemed to be apart from the others in more ways than one; Paul D’Amico and his silent partner, Johnny.

  For a second, our eyes met, and D’Amico smiled. He made no gesture, but the smile was smug enough to tell me he wasn’t worried about a thing. This was another in the D’Amico bag.

  Then Charley was coming across toward me, and grinning, and I felt cold and steady and calloused.

  It was a dull round, a round of reflexes and counter-punching, a tired replay of a melody we’d worn thin through the years.

  Under the eucalyptus tree, Royal Lincoln waited patiently.

  He looked slow. He kept moving, though, hitting from a fairly square stance, erect and flat-footed. His right was carried high, but wide of his chin; the two early times he threw it, I could see it coming as slow as a balloon.

  The third time, he almost knocked off my headguard.

  I went into the ropes, and felt it again, an overhand right, a sucker punch. Had my eyes gone bad?

  I could hear the murmur in the crowd through the buzzing in my ears. I could feel his bulk crowding me into a corner, and I put my hands inside, and burned my back on the ropes, trying to slide out.

  He clubbed me again, and the redness came, and I poured leather like a Golden Glover, as he covered, riding it out.

  The crowd was noisy, now, a fight crowd, and I’d driven Lincoln to the center of the ring. I was hitting him with both hands, but no place where it would hurt. He was covered; he didn’t open up to strike back.

  The rest of it was dull. The rest of it looked like Royal was under orders.

  The scribes wanted to know about that overhand right; how much had it hurt?

  “Plenty,” I said. “Royal can hit.” Local boy.

  “Not like Giani,” one of them said.

  “Don’t talk like a tourist,” I told him. “Royal’s always been one of the heaviest hitters in the business.”

  Some laughs. Except for a reporter from the L. A. Times.

  It wasn’t funny to him. He said stiffly, “I’ve heard Royal described as the heaviest hitter of all time.”

  “So have I,” the other said, “but only in your column.”

  Laughs.

  Chinning with the crowd, making with the good will, building the gate. Fun in the afternoon sun, but the sun went down after a while, and they left, and it got cold.

  “You sure stunk,” Max said. “What the hell is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The murders, I suppose.”

  “D’Amico starting to scare you?”

  “Hell, no!” Why the “hell,” why so emphatic? Was he?

  “You’re getting to be a regular gentleman,” Max said. “Even when you foul, you do it in a nice, clean way. Sally’s made a gentleman out of you.”

  “Maybe. Don’t worry about it, Max. The worse I look, the more D’Amico will bet. The more he bets, the more he’ll get hurt. And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Gawd,” Max said. “He ain’t going to be hurt at all, the way you’re going. But you are, bad.”

  “I’ll be hurt,” I agreed, “but I’m not going to lose, even if I have to carry an ax in there with me.”

  “You can’t carry an ax,” Max said. “That’s the hell of it.”

  A hundred and sixt
y million people in this country and only I believed in me.

  After supper the pinochle game started, and Sally and I sat in the big kitchen, playing canasta. Five minutes of that and she threw her cards, face up, on the table.

  “Let’s go to the Hoot Owl Club.”

  “Why? What can we learn there?”

  “I want to talk to Ruth. She’ll talk to me. She needs a friend, the way she must be feeling.”

  “She’s got one,” I said, “Harry the horse.”

  “I want to talk to him, too.”

  “Sally,” I said patiently, “he’s nobody to talk to, right now. And Ruth probably isn’t, either.”

  “I’ll go alone, then,” she said. She stood up. “I want to know, Luke. All you care about is the title, but I want to know about that night.”

  “All right,” I said. “God damn it, all right!”

  She drove; she handled all of it. She told Max we were just going over to see some friends in Santa Monica, and she drove the car.

  A damn-fool idea and I rode next to her in silence. Wisps of fog drifted over the highway from the beach side; the headlights of approaching cars were haloed by it.

  Lincoln Boulevard was jammed with coming-home traffic, but was reasonably clear on our side. Not a word from either of us on the entire trip.

  When we parked in the small parking-lot, we could hear the juke box going inside, and the sound of Harry’s laugh. He must be feeling better.

  The place was doing a business. Workingmen in their bright Sunday sport shirts and part-rayon slacks. Workingmen and their girls and wives. At the far end of the bar, Ruth Gonzales was sitting in front of a beer.

  And next to a man, a small man with black, shiny hair and a garish sport shirt and an “Oh, yeah?” sort of look.

  Her eyes met mine, then Sally’s, and went back to the beer in front of her. Shamed, had she looked?

  We crowded in at a spot not too far from them, and Harry came down to serve us.

  His face blank. “What’ll it be, folks?”

  “A smile,” Sally said. “When did you stop smiling, Harry?”

  “When Noodles died. What’ll it be, folks?” I said, “You’re judging us awful God-damned quick, Harry.”

  Next to me, a man said, “Hey, mister, there’s ladies present.”

  “That’s right,” Harry said. “You owe the man an apology, Luke.”

  Redness in the mind, tremble in the hands. Sally’s grip digging into my forearm. “He’s right, Luke. You do owe the man an apology.”

  I turned to him and said, “I’m sorry. I apologize to both of you.”

  Beyond him, the woman he was with looked straight ahead, miffed. A heavy woman, heavily made up, her face blank in cheap pseudo-dignity.

  Harry said, “That’s better.”

  The man mumbled something and turned away.

  Sally said, “I guess we shouldn’t have come. Harry’s the kind of moron who hates a fact.” She took a breath. “Let’s go, Luke.”

  “I’m here now,” I said, “and Harry owes us more than silence.”

  The man next to me said, “Easy, mister. Let me warn you, fair, that big boy used to be murder in a ring.”

  “I know,” I said. “I saw him murdered. I’ll take a glass of milk, Harry. I don’t know what Sally wants.”

  “A glass of beer,” Sally said. “Eastern beer.”

  “You’ll have to buy a bottle. I ain’t got Eastern beer on tap.”

  “I can swing it,” she said. “You know Luke had nothing to do with what happened to Noodles, Harry. You aren’t so clean, yourself.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. He turned to me. “I talked to Krueger yesterday. He got bounced, didn’t he? Why?”

  “How do I know? Sam Wald’s the new manager. You tell me why. You’re the man with answers.”

  “Krueger says it’s a job, a job to end all jobs. He said millions are going to be bet on Giani. He said it’s arranged all the way around. That puts you in the wrong kind of company for me.”

  “This place clear, Harry?” I asked him.

  “Clear enough. Why?”

  “You want to bet it against my end of the purse? You never had better odds. You can even keep the owl, for luck.”

  For seconds, he said nothing. “You’re leveling, Champ?”

  “Name me one time when I didn’t.”

  He took a deep breath. “Yeah, that’s right. Yes. Yes.” He clicked his teeth. “I’ll get the drinks.”

  The man next to me said, “Champ? Luke? Are you Luke Pilgrim?”

  “That’s right.”

  Nothing more from him. Harry came with a bottle of Milwaukee beer and a carton of milk and two glasses.

  He set them down in front of us. “We all know who killed Noodles, don’t we? Even the cops know.”

  “Johnny.”

  “Sure, and I thought you were working with those boys now. The way Krueger talked — ”

  “In a corner,” I said, “very few guys know more than Dutch Krueger. Outside of his corner, I’m surprised he knows enough to find his way home.”

  “I guess. That’s right, I guess. That’s what they all say. But that Johnny, and what can we do about it? Even the cops can’t do anything about it.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “I want to kill him.”

  “That wouldn’t bring Noodles back. Get all the Giani money you can handle, Harry. You can buy a new owl, a platinum one.”

  “Oh, Champ,” he said. “Jesus, Champ, maybe it’s the way you feel, but — Oh, hell, it’s the way I felt before the Burke fight, too.”

  “Hey, mister,” Sally said, “there’s ladies present.”

  Harry started to chuckle, and then he threw back his head, and the laugh came. On his perch, the owl shivered, and the blaring juke box seemed to whisper.

  At the end of the bar, Ruth Gonzales watched him, and then she looked our way, and her gaze went to Sally, and she smiled.

  The man next to us and his heavy-faced woman climbed off their stools, and Sally beckoned to Ruth. She came over, bringing the patent-leather kid along.

  He was a jockey. His name was Ralph. He’d won eight in the last two days, out of eleven rides. He was hot.

  Sally waited until he went to the growler to tell Ruth, “He’s cute.”

  “He’s all right,” Ruth said. “He’s no Noodles.” Her voice was shaky. “They — the law, they still think I — had something to do with what happened.”

  “Have you any idea how it happened, Ruth?”

  She shook her head. “I know he — knew something about the murder of that Brenda Vane.” She lowered her voice, and looked down toward where Harry was serving someone else. “And Harry does, too, I’m almost sure. But if he doesn’t want to talk about it, I suppose I shouldn’t.”

  “I wish you would talk about it, Ruth,” Sally said gently.

  Ruth shook her head. “I like both you kids. But Harry’s my best friend in the world, and with him it’s clean.”

  Then Harry was standing there, smiling at us. “Trying to pump her, you two?”

  I nodded.

  “Trouble,” he said quietly, “always trouble with you, Luke.”

  “I want to know I didn’t kill her,” I said. “You didn’t. I know you didn’t.”

  Next to me, Sally made a sound in her throat. I stared at Harry, waiting for what was coming.

  His big face was composed. “As long as you know that, it doesn’t matter to you who did, does it?”

  “You mean,” I asked, “you know who killed her, you know for sure?”

  “I didn’t say that, but it could be true. All I’m telling you is that you didn’t kill her. I’m not admitting anything beyond that.”

  “He’s a friend of yours, Harry?”

  “I didn’t say it was a ‘he.’ You’re making noises like a cop, Luke.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “if I knew who killed her, I’d remember what happened, in her apartment. Maybe
I was there when the killer was.”

  “You weren’t. Look, Luke, two guys besides the killer knew who killed her, maybe. One of them was Noodles, and he tried to get to you, maybe, after he learned he was poisoned. Johnny killed him, and that’s not much of a ‘maybe.’ The boys who pull the strings on Johnny don’t want you to know you’re in the clear. They could get a title fight easier if you didn’t know. And they could get you to throw the fight.” He paused. “Maybe.”

  “Sergeant Sands knows I went to her apartment,” I said. “I told him that, the other day. He says I didn’t kill her. So there’s no pressure on me from D’Amico. I wanted that fight, Harry.”

  He smiled, both big hands on the bar. “Okay, you got it. And what do you want from me?”

  “Another glass of milk,” I said, “and whatever the others are having they can have on me.”

  Ruth said, “Sally and I will have a bottle of champagne. That’s what she had last time.”

  Sally nodded, her eyes still on Harry. “Don’t you want to tell us all you know, Harry?”

  “I don’t and I won’t,” he said. “What’ll you have, Ralph?”

  “I can go for that champagne, too,” he said. Sally still watched Harry. “Was it her boy friend?”

  “Get her out of my hair, Luke,” Harry said. “Get her off my back.”

  “She’s jealous,” I said. “She wants to know what happened.”

  “How do I know?” he said. “I’m no peeping Tom.” He went down to get the champagne.

  There was no more talk about the murder; Harry wouldn’t have it. We talked of fights and horses and Harry Truman, under the watchful eyes of the stuffed owl. We talked about Paul D’Amico and Sam Wald and Patsy Giani and Johnny.

  Harry said, “I’d like to have the four of them, right here in this room. Just you and me against the four of them, Luke.”

  “You could have Patsy,” I said, “all by yourself.”

  Then Sally said, “Luke, it’s ten o’clock.”

  We said good-by all around and they wished me luck, and we went out into the cold night.

  As we walked to the car Sally said, “You drive. I think I’m drunk.”

  I opened the door for her, and closed it, and went around to climb in behind the wheel.

  As I pulled out onto Lincoln Boulevard, she said, “Glass menagerie.”