Soft Touch

by John D. MacDonald

  They seemed to buy it, but I couldn’t be certain. They moved to other questions. At seven we went to my house. I got the money from the bureau. Quellen read the serial numbers onto the tape. I thought they were going to impound it. Instead it was handed back to me. I stood, holding it, staring stupidly at them.

  “I guess you earned it, Jamison,” Barnstock said in a nasty way. “You better declare it as income. That wraps it up for now. Maybe we’ll be back.”

  I walked to the front hallway with them.

  “Is it against the rules for you guys to enlighten me a little about what’s going on?”

  They turned on me with identical expressions of cold amusement. Quellan looked questioningly at Barnstock, who nodded.

  Quellan said, “Your old pal used you for a sucker, Jamison. We’re in it because of the international implications. We’ve got to prove that the Federal Government had no part of any secret deal to sell or supply arms to anybody. Biskay used you to help him lift some very heavy funds. At least a million. Maybe five. He had his hidey hole all planned. And, my friend, several groups of very rough people know there was that much and very probably know who lifted it. And they will go to great lengths to get hold of that much money. We traced you. They can trace you. I think you’re standing out in the cold cold breeze, boy. They won’t use a tape recorder. They’ll want a lead on Biskay and the black suitcase. They’ll keep asking.”

  I watched them walk out to the curb and get into the job with the tail fins and turn on the lights and roll away. The street was empty. The shadows under the trees were black. I locked the front door and the back door and I cursed Vince Biskay. And myself.

  I called Paul Heissen. They said he was home. I called his home. I asked him if it would be okay if I went away for a little while. He was polite and very firm. He said no. He said if I took off, I would be brought back. I slammed the phone down onto the cradle.

  12

  Barnstock and Quellan had interrogated me on Monday, the nineteenth of May. There was nothing I could do but wait. The days went by. I could not tell whether they had just been attempting to frighten me, or whether I was actually in danger. Yet every time I thought of Vince it seemed more possible that he had set me up for his friends to knock over. I did not go out at night. I played golf at the club, but my timing was off and my concentration was spotty. In the evenings I tried to read but I would find myself losing the sense of what I read. I refused the invitations of those friends who felt that they had to cheer me up.

  Paul Heissen came and talked to me several times. There was, of course, no word about Lorraine. On a Wednesday, the twenty-eighth, Paul had me come downtown and make a formal statement. He mentioned that he had gotten the key to Camp Sootsus from E. J. and had gone up and looked around. Lorraine apparently hadn’t been there.

  The human organism cannot sustain tension very long. I began to feel listless and depressed. Once I phoned Liz Addams at her home. As soon as she understood who it was, she hung up on me. And I began to drink more heavily. Not to complete drunkenness. But to the point where the edges and outlines of things were softened and bearable, from morning until night.

  At times I thought of the money, of the fat brown packages in the bottom of the packing case, sleeping there, nestled and content, dreaming of yachts and rings, women and kings, wines and spices and far-off places. And, for a time, by concentrating on the money, I was able to summon up the goose-pimply hollowness in the belly, the quick and shallow breathing of excitement. But it was a jaded descendant of the emotion I had felt when I had first seen the money. And after a time I was unable to achieve any quickening when I thought of it. It was money, wrapped and hidden. I was rich beyond any previous promptings of avarice. One day I sat at the living room desk and computed what return I could get from the money were it invested. Two hundred and sixteen thousand a year. About seven hundred a day. But it slept there in the crate in storage, its big muscles slack. It gave me the frantic feeling of wasting time. But I could not leave. I was forced to wait. I could try to leave, but it would be stupid to be on the run, to be a hunted man. I told myself that one day soon Paul would clear me officially. In the meantime I was existing. Whenever my wallet was nearly empty, I would take another two bills from the bureau hoard. I tried not to change too many of them at the same place. My expenses were not large. The money would last me a long time. Long enough.

  As window dressing, I made a date with Archie Brill and went to his office and talked about divorce. He said I could start proceedings in about two years.

  After I left his office I stopped in a bar and looked at myself in the back bar mirror. Archie had told me I wasn’t looking very well. The mirror was blue. I looked beat. Gaunted face and hollow eyes, and the lines very deep around my mouth. I would lie awake nights in the dark guest room and listen to my heart, to the sharp and rapid beat that came out of bottles. There was an emptiness in my life I could not fill. The world spun slowly into the endless heat of summer, and every day was like the one behind it and the one in front of it. I had told Irene I didn’t need her any longer. The house was dusty and dirty, and the grass grew long and rank in the yard. Tinker phoned me a few times, obviously wanting to be asked over. I did not want to see her.

  I remember one evening in particular. I was drunk. And at midnight I found myself with the phone at my ear, listening to the dial tone, filled with a fierce compulsion to call someone, anyone, and say, “I killed them. Both of them.”

  I pulled myself together with a long shuddering effort, completely shaken by the narrowness of my escape. For the first time in my life I understood the curious compulsion to confess.

  I went to my bedroom and did something I had not done since I was a child. I knelt beside my bed. I clasped my hands, bent my head, closed my eyes and tried to pray.

  “God help me,” I said.

  There was no answer. I was an emptiness kneeling and praying to emptiness. The floor hurt my knees.

  “Who am I?” I asked.

  And heard my own answer. Murderer. Thief. Libertine. Drunkard.

  I laid my empty body and empty soul in the bed and yearned for the momentary oblivion of sleep.

  The next day I was vastly restless. I walked a dozen miles through the empty cluttered rooms. In the last hour of daylight a short and violent thunderstorm came down on the city. I watched it from the living room windows. The house was like a sturdy boat moving on even keel through gale winds. It cleared and the storm grumbled off into the southwest, and for a short time the last of the sun turned the world to gold. I had a curious feeling of expectancy, as though I was on the verge of some great revelation. I dressed most carefully and went out and got into the car and drove away, with no destination in mind.

  13

  The place was called the Sidewheeler. I had been there twice, possibly three times before. It was about eighteen miles south of Vernon, and just over the state line, and in a wide open country. The other times I had been there it had been with a group, after a cocktail party. There was a six-lane divided highway and, for about a mile and a half on either side of it, neon yelped in bright delirium.

  There were cabins and bars and clubs and motels and drive-ins and package stores and eateries and strippers and motels and gift shops and pinball galleries and floor shows and casinos.

  The area was a vast asphalt scab on the valley floor, and it was known as the Greenwood Strip. The Sidewheeler had the most pretentious layout, a uniformed man to park your car in a huge lot, a blue neon line drawing of a river boat with a turning paddle wheel. The décor carried out the motif of the sign and the name, with portholes, brass bells and ships’ wheels, navigation charts and red and green running lights, and, in the game room, croupiers dressed like Mississippi gamblers. It was well known in Vernon that there wasn’t an honest game along the strip, that the cheaper bars were infested with B girls. But, as with most areas where the gambling is heavy, the Sidewheeler and the other three or four top places served generous drink
s and excellent food at a reasonable price. And enticed some almost big names into the floor shows.

  I surrendered the wagon to the man in uniform and pocketed my claim check and went into the calculatedly obscure lighting of the bar. Trade was good. As I had had nothing but coffee all day, the second generous martini made my lips feel numb. I sat on my bar stool and looked at the pale shoulders of the women, the intent faces of their men. I seemed to sit in a private little area of personal silence where I could listen to all of the sounds at once, the busy aviary of the words and laughter of women, the clink and tinkle of ice on glass, of silver on china. Whirr of the electric daiquiri maker. Muted rumble of truck on the highway. Clack of ice in the professional shaker. Blur of male voices.

  In the blue gloom the place was full of tiny highlights. On rings and earrings and bracelets and lighters and drinks and cuff links. The highlights moved and changed. And faces bent toward the abrupt orange flames of matches and lighters.

  The party at my left moved on into the dining room when the headwaiter told them their table was ready. The bar stools were taken quickly. I ordered the third drink.

  The voice on my left said, “Ever see this one?”

  I turned and looked at him. He was young and big, in a gray seersucker jacket, a blue sports shirt open at the throat. He had a cropped blond Prussian head, a fleshy face, small eyes. He looked like a recent All-American mention after three years on the road and ten thousand drinks. I suspected that if the light was better, I could see the small broken veins in his nose and cheeks.

  “See what?” I asked. He had his big hand closed.

  “Got a fly in here. A high class fly. The only kind you can catch in a joint like this. Now watch.”

  He had the water chaser that had come with his straight shot. It was half full. He clapped his palm over the top of the glass. The live housefly flew down into the water. It buzzed on the top. The man took a swizzle stick and poked it under. Soon it gave up all movement.

  “You follow me?” he said.

  “So what? You caught a fly and you drowned it. Bully for you.”

  “Now what if he stays in there ten minutes, under water? I ask you this. Is he dead?”

  “You’re damn well told he’s dead.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s ten after eight. I take him out at twenty after. You say he’ll be dead.”

  “He’s dead already.”

  He took out his wallet, selected a twenty-dollar bill and put it on the bar top. “I say he’ll be alive.”

  “That fly will be alive?”

  “And he’ll fly away.”

  “No play on words, friend. No substituting flies.”

  “How the hell could I do that? No. No gag. That fly will fly away, pal.”

  I put my twenty on top of his. When about eight minutes had gone by he asked the nearest bartender for a salt shaker. When the ten minutes were up, he fished the fly out with the swizzle stick, tapped it off on the bar top. He lit a match so we could see it better, a shapeless black blob.

  “Dead?”

  “It sure is.”

  “Don’t reach for the money,” he said. He covered the fly with a mound of salt until it was completely concealed. “Now keep an eye on him.”

  I watched the mound of salt. Nothing happened. The man ordered a new shot and a fresh chaser. I sipped my martini. Suddenly the surface of the mound of salt stirred. Then the salt blew away with a tiny explosion as the fly burst out and flew away. The man picked up the money and tucked it in his wallet. “Learned that in San Antone two years ago,” he said. “Bet I’ve made over fifteen hundred bucks. Buy you a drink.”

  “Okay. It was fair and square. I’ll be damned.”

  “Salt dries them out fast. Fifteen minutes is too long. Roy Macksie is my name.”

  “Jerry Jamison.” We shook hands.

  He tore off six paper matches and put them on the bar. “Five bucks says you can’t arrange those matches so they form four equilateral triangles.”

  “No thanks.”

  “That’s a money maker too, Jerry.” We talked. He said he sold heavy construction equipment. The second sip of the fifth drink made me gag. I said I had to eat or fall on my face.

  “I’m hungry too,” he said, “but let’s not eat here. There’s a place down the strip that has a hell of a good steak. Okay?”

  “Okay by me, Roy.”

  We picked up our change, left tips on the bar and went out into the busy night. I was ahead of him. There was a canopied entrance and two shallow steps. There was a hard and meaningful nudge in the small of my back.

  “Now, Jerry, down the steps and straight out to the curb.”

  The uniformed man was ten feet away. “Car check, gentlemen?” he said.

  “We’ll be back later,” Macksie said.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “Right out to the curb. Want you to meet some friends. Want to talk about Vince.”

  I walked. I knew my reflexes were dull. I could remember a lot of things I had been taught long ago, but I guessed he had learned in the same school because the metal hardness did not touch my back again. I reached the curb. Traffic was heavy. When there was a gap in traffic, I did not move forward at his command. I waited for him to nudge me again. The moment he did so, I leaned back against the gun muzzle so as to maintain contact with it, and at the same time, spun to my left, swinging my right arm in a hard arc, fingers open, estimating the level of his throat. It worked with a perfection I had not expected. I chopped him just under the jaw with the edge of my hand. He did not sway or stagger. He went down like a big puppet, when the strings are cut, feet in the grass, belly across the curbing, face smacking asphalt with a meaty sound, right hand still in the pocket of the seersucker jacket. Oncoming traffic whirred by and I saw the pale ovals of faces turned to look at the roadside tableau. I stood there a moment, uncertain as to what to do next. And saw two men coming swiftly across the far lanes toward me through the eerie yellow glow of sodium vapor lights. They were halted by traffic on my side. I turned and ran. I ran along the edge of the highway toward the oncoming lights, my feet making a leathery slapping noise on the paving. I had the feeling that I floated along without effort, swift as the wind.

  Until I stumbled and nearly fell and heard the ragged gasping of my breath and began to feel the clinch of pain in my left side. I looked back and saw no one and walked swiftly toward a jumble of confusing lights ahead.

  Most of the businesses fronted on the highway. There was a gap between a bar and a darkened store. It had been turned into an entrance to a carnival set up in the wide field behind the businesses along the strip. I walked into the heavy pedestrian traffic that moved slowly up and down the small midway. Strings of lights and the bright glare of gasoline lanterns. Dull roar of generators competing with brass music and the amplified brag and wheedle of the talkers, and the glissanding roar of the rides. Sawdust and sweat and cotton candy and three balls for a dime, you can’t lose, and the lazy humid young hips under the cotton skirts, and babies asleep with their heads bobbling on the shoulders of young husbands, and roving gangs of teens, and the snapping of the crooked captive rifles killing the plywood ducks. I moved at their pace through stinks of beer, perfume, sweat, by the blurry lights, past the romp and halloo, on undone legs, my left side full of knives.

  I edged out of the throng to a quiet corner where I could stand with my back toward the illusion of safety of taut worn canvas, and looked back the way I had come, looked back toward the garish temporary arch, waiting for them. I remembered how they had looked coming across the highway, swift and black under the poisonous yellow of the lights—as unreal as Dick Tracy. And in their very directness, their look of purpose, was the same thing I had seen in front of the air terminal as they had come toward Vince and Zaragosa. I wondered if they were the same. Sweat began to dry. Breathing became slower. My legs did not tremble as much. I lit a cigarette. And watched.

  The girl appeared suddenly beside m
e. I had not seen her approach me. Red bullfighter pants. Soiled ankles. Hair bleached hard and white. Mouth painted square. Big breasts swelling a white satin blouse. Broad patient face and practiced bovine eyes. Seventeen or thirty, or anything in between. Red purse with sequins, many missing.

  “Maybe we both got stood up, hey?” she said, her voice deep and rough.

  “Maybe,” I said. They would look for a man alone.

  “My name is Bobbie.”

  “Hi, Bobbie. I’m Joe.”

  “Hi, Joe.”

  We weighed and studied each other for that timeless moment, that ancient recognition. What passes for pride had been eased by the trite gambit of the approach.

  “I got a trailer,” she said.

  “That’s nice. That’s handy.”

  She had looked at my clothes, my shoes. “Twennyfi’ bucks.”

  “All right.”

  “I like a guy don’t try to argue and chisel the price.”

  I wanted to tell her there was something refreshing about such directness, after Tinker and Mandy. I went with her. She had found my hand and we walked holding hands. When we came to a narrow place, she went ahead, her fleshy hips rolling in an exaggerated way in the tight red fabric. We went out of the lights to a back area, between ropes and stakes and guy lines. A group of men sat around a packing case playing cards in the hard white light of a gasoline lantern.

  When we passed close one of them said, “Good evenin’, Bobbie,” his voice slow and deep and dignified.

  “Hi, Andy,” she said. They continued their game. No jeers or whistles. To each his own function and occupation.

  The trailers were clumped fifty yards away. There were lights in some of them. I heard the jackal voice of a comedian, and then the prolonged roar of studio applause and laughter. Her trailer was aluminum, and small and road-weary. It was off the hitch. A gray sedan was parked next to it. She knocked on the door, listened to the silence, and then unlocked it, turned on a light—a big bulb in a vivid orange shade. Like being inside a musky pumpkin. She latched the door behind us, adjusted venetian blinds to close out all of the night.