by Al Fray
“You don’t drive in River City without belonging to the union,” Mancusso said. “Get that straight, McCarthy.”
“I believe in unions,” I said shortly, and included them both as I spoke, “Just as soon as I can get the cash together I’ll take out a card. The Taft-Hartley Bill gives me thirty days.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Vehon said softly. “We sort of lean toward our own rules in this local. If you aren’t a union man you’ll have to let this rig sit here. We send out drivers from the hall.”
“But you didn’t have one for Tyler Trucking this morning. They had a sign in the window, needing a man.”
“We didn’t happen to have one available,” Vehon said easily, but I could see the young punk slowly pounding his fist into his palm.
“If you’re so short of men, you can hardly object to my driving,” I pointed out. “Sometime in the next month I’ll be in to pay my dues and get a card. It’s strictly according to the T. H. Bill.”
This time Link Mancusso spoke. “You live long enough you hear everything,” he said, through the side of his mouth. “A bindle stiff off the freights and he’s telling us about his rights!”
Link was still pounding that fist into his palm. We were getting there now. If I hoped to work in close to the underside of River City I’d have to start somewhere and opportunity was knocking. I turned to the side-of-the-mouth character and let him have a little time to think of something clever to say. He didn’t seem to be able to come up with anything so I gave him an opening.
“You mean the law doesn’t give me thirty days?”
“Law is one thing and enforcement is something else, McCarthy,” he said. “Have you figured out who’s going to see that you get your free time?”
“Sure,” I said. “McCarthy.”
I dropped my smoke and jammed a hard left to his midriff. His breath caught as he doubled toward me and I brought up a fast right that connected with his jaw, an operation that would have made the original McCarthy more than a little proud. I packed in one more left before Mancusso hit the ground. When he did he flopped over on one side and drew his legs up while he hugged his stomach. It was obvious that Link didn’t have any interest at all in getting up. I gave Vehon a long steady look.
“And how do you feel about the Taft-Hartley law?” I asked.
Vehon looked at me through half closed eyes, the fingers of one fat hand stroking his rough cheek. He should have been making noises about goon squads and having me dropped into the river some dark night, but he surveyed me in silence for several seconds.
“Get into your truck, McCarthy,” he said at last. “It’s like you say, the law gives a grace period. Come in and see us before your time is up, eh?”
“I’ll be around,” I said, and headed for the tab of the semi. Good sportsmanship might have indicated a helping hand for the fallen but I wasn’t out to sell McCarthy as a scoutmaster, and by the time I was behind the wheel once more Vehon had managed to get Link Mancusso to a sitting position.
“Gee,” Bub said, and there was a light in his eyes that was good to see, “you sure clobbered him, Mac.”
“You were telling me about the Little League team,” I said, but Bub seemed uninterested in baseball. He hunched forward to look.
“Boy, he’s just getting up, Mac. Say, are you a fighter too?”
“Just a truck driver. We went through that a while ago,” I said, grinning. “Those guys came looking for trouble and maybe you’ve noticed, Bub, that trouble is about the one thing you can depend on finding with a minimum of effort. Now let’s see if we can’t make up a little time and get you back to the ball park in time for that practice session.”
One thought kept working its way to the top of the heap as I drove along, and that was the speed with which Vehon had made contact. Whatever his pipe line it was certainly operating at peak efficiency. I’d hardly been on the Tyler payroll half a day.
At twenty to five we pulled into the truck yard and Bub hurried toward the house. I eased the big semi back into line between two other trucks and the older fellow I’d seen earlier in the day came out of the brick building that housed maintenance equipment.
“Name’s Arno. Arno Walchek,” he said. His bald head was pink on top and his arms were big. Nudging social security age, I guessed, but there was plenty of hard muscle in his hand as our grips locked.
“Warner McCarthy,” I said, matching his grin. “Just call me Mac.”
“Sure, Mac. She running all right today?” He nodded toward the semi I’d just climbed out of.
“No trouble. Seems in good shape, this rig.”
“Glad to hear it. I guess the boss wants to see you before you leave, Mac.” Walchek used his thumb to indicate the glassed-in office and then snapped open the hood latch on the semi and reached for the oil stick.
Gail glanced up as I opened the screen door and Bub, who had been talking a mile a minute, stopped and grinned up at me. My eyes went back to the girl again and I was getting more than a glance now. Something deep and fundamental was coming through, something several levels above the employer-employee relationship. Then Bub broke the spell.
“Can I ride with Mac tomorrow?” he asked eagerly.
“We’ll see. Weren’t you going to baseball practice, Bub?” Gail said.
“Well, sure.” Bub grinned at me again and then went into the house and Gail nodded toward a chair. “Sit down, Mr. McCarthy.”
“It’s Mac.” I said, parking myself on the chair. She bit her lip momentarily and then those blue eyes were full on my face again.
“I—was going to offer to pay you by the day for a while, money to eat on until you get your feet on the ground. Right now I’m feeling a little silly about the advance I gave you for a driver’s license. It’s pretty obvious that you’re able to look after yourself in every way, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Mac. Remember?”
“Well, Mac then. You seem to be making quite a dent in River City.”
“Kids exaggerate a fight. You know how that is.”
“I’ve had two versions,” she said. “Mr. Vehon called to ask where you came from and a few other things.”
“About when I’m going to join the union?”
“No,” Gail said, and the smile in her eyes was more hope than humor. “I gathered that you and Mr. Vehon reached an agreement on that point.”
“We’re playing it real legal. I’ve got thirty days,” I said, getting to my feet. “What time in the morning?”
“Seven. If you don’t change your mind, that is.”
“And why would I change?”
“Because you could find a lot of better towns than River City,” Gail said. I raised my eyebrows and she went on. “I presume Bub mentioned that Dad died in a truck accident over a year ago.”
“Tough. It could happen to anyone.”
“They’ll tell you, if you ask around, that Bill Tyler was drunk at the wheel. A half empty rum bottle was found in the cab and two witnesses claimed to have been forced off the road by the truck Dad was driving. Later, it went over the embankment.” Gail toyed with a pen on her desk and when she looked up again she was fighting back the tears. “It wasn’t an accident, Mac. Sure he’d take a drink, but not on the job. No one was more set against driving while under than Bill Tyler. He—I know he was—was sent over that embankment in his truck. I’ll never believe he was driving it.”
“What about the investigation?” I asked quickly. “Surely the autopsy would show—”
Gail shook her head. “The complaints about being forced off the highway came in right away and the police were out here but Pop didn’t come home. They finally located the truck under sixty feet of water and they were several days more getting the rig up.”
“You mean the embankment was—” Just in time I stopped. McCarthy wasn’t supposed to know all about the scenery around the town.
“The rim of the rock quarry,” Gail said. She stood up and looked at me and said, “So you co
uld find better towns, Mac, and maybe better outfits to drive for than Tyler Trucking, but if you decide to stay we’ll be glad to have you in one of our rigs.”
It would have been nice to sit back down and ask her all about her troubles and promise to help float the Tyler enterprise but this trucking job was only a stepping stone for me. It was not to play Galahad for a tottering truck company that I had come back to River City, so I mumbled a vague “We’ll see how it goes for a day or two,” and shrugged my shoulders and went out.
Chapter 3
At Hobart’s Haberdashery I picked up a few things, slacks, a T-shirt, some socks, and the clerk called me sir. A little strange, I thought, since he and I played on the same basketball team in high school for three years and he never called me anything but Swede.
By seven o’clock I’d located a small place, a bachelor apartment in a building just out from the business district a few blocks. An hour later I’d cleaned up and was on my way to dinner. The spot I had in mind was the Tip-Top Drive-In, one of those neon and stainless steel triumphs with a large overhanging roof and car hops in as brief a costume as the law allows. I found a stool next to the space reserved for trays, napkins, and other trappings of the car-hop operation, then took a slow look at the hired help.
One girl was a stranger. The others I knew at least by name and one was definitely more than a mere acquaintance—Doreen Phillips. We’d dated off and on for more than six years. Twice in that time Doreen and I had gone steady, but only for short periods. She was a girl you’d look at several times no matter where you chanced to meet, a redhead with more than her share of curves and cuteness, and maybe that was the trouble. Somehow you couldn’t help knowing that Doreen Phillips was playing the field and would keep on playing it until she was sixty-six. I watched her now as she tossed her name card against the windshield of a convertible, handed two menus through the open window, flashed the money smile, and bounced back to set up a tray or two while she waited for the customers to make up their minds. When Doreen came to the counter next to me I met her eyes and held on deliberately. It was sort of an acid test—she looked every available man over with great care and she’d known Swede Anderson pretty well; if she didn’t recognize me now it was a fair guess that I was without worry in River City.
“Hi,” Doreen said, and smiled.
“Hello.” I kept on looking at her and she evaluated me all right but there wasn’t the slightest recognition in her eyes. When Doreen finally turned away to get the order from the couple in the convertible I swung back to the counter girl and ordered. The only other exchange with Doreen came a little later when she put a cigarette in her mouth and began to fumble through her bag for matches. There was a whole box of paper matches right under the counter in front of her, the advertising book-matches that bear the house name and go with every pack of cigarettes; but I went along with the gag and flipped a flame on my lighter.
“Thanks,” Doreen said, and tucked her nylon blouse a little tighter into her trim waistband. Not that the blouse was out; it was just that she’d learned somewhere along the line that this added to the contour. “I—I don’t believe I’ve seen you around. New in River City?”
“I’m McCarthy,” I said. Since the nicely stitched letters in bright silk thread gave her name, the introductions were complete, so I added, “And you’re right, Doreen; I’m a stranger within the gates.”
Car lights blinked then and she put her cigarette down just under the counter. “I hope you’ll like the town,” Doreen said lightly, and then went toward the waiting car. I finished my coffee, left the tip, paid my check, and departed in the general direction of the bars. On the way I had to pass Marty Bruno’s little business and I slowed to a stop half a block short of the place.
He was going to be a problem to me, Marty Bruno. He ran a candy, tobacco, and magazine concession on the corner in front of the River City National Bank. I’d known him pretty well, and he wasn’t going to be deceived by the color of my hair or the weight I’d lost or the scar. He wouldn’t have thought about my glasses. The things by which Marty identified his legion of friends were footfalls, the sound of a voice, or small mannerisms of speech, for Marty Bruno was blind.
And Marty was as sharp as the edge of a January wind; he’d come back home after World War II to rebuild his life around the four senses he had left and he didn’t miss a bet. Green glasses concealed his eyes and he moved around behind the counter with a deftness that didn’t betray his blindness at all. Marty quickly learned by sound those he’d known so many years by sight and you never had to speak first when you walked up to his little concession. You didn’t have to name the brand when you asked for smokes either, after the first time or two. People liked him for remembering these little things. He had built himself a thriving business and was more than proud of the fact that his twin sons considered their dad a successful merchant rather than a blind man.
Now, standing half a block away from his concession, I wondered how you go about the paradox of hiding from someone who cannot see. I couldn’t trust four years to have erased Swede Anderson from Marty’s mental file. Trying to kid him out of the identification didn’t seem like a good idea either and I didn’t want to have to walk around his place for the rest of my stay in the town. Much better to make the new entry now, but to do that I would have to confuse Marty a little bit the first time over. I walked toward him and when his head raised slightly to listen, I turned my right toe in a little and scuffed the shoe with each step. When I stopped in front of the counter his face was attentive and I let my voice drop a little as I spoke.
“Pack of Luckies.”
“Sure thing.” He slid them onto the glass-topped counter and smiled. “Peach of an evening, isn’t it?”
Almost imperceptibly his head leaned toward me to catch the voice, but I only grunted and tossed a bill on the glass, making sure a corner of the green paper touched his hand. Custom requires that you call the denomination when handing a bill to a blind man, but I had to go a little rough right here, and this wasn’t one of the pleasantest things I could imagine. I let him smooth it out and waited. He was sure now that he didn’t know me, and he smiled openly once more.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Money. What the hell does it look—” I stopped then, as though just discovering that there had to be a reason for his obvious question. “Sorry, I didn’t notice,” I said. “It’s a one.”
“Thanks. Just come in?” Marty asked, and slid the change into a heavy glass tray on the counter.
“Today. Caught on with Tyler Trucking and figure to stay a while.”
“Tyler?” Involuntarily Marty whistled, then caught himself and righted the slip. “Well, good luck Mr.—?”
“McCarthy. And they call me what you’d guess they would.”
“Nice to know you, Mac,” he said. “I’m Marty Bruno.”
“How’ya, Marty,” I said and took the hand he put across the counter. And suddenly I thought that the hail I’d just given him, the “how’ya, Marty,” would be a good trademark for me whenever I came close enough to speak to him. It would brand me, keep his mind off what might otherwise be striking similarities in voice and step.
We kicked it back and forth a while and finally I asked about bars. Marty recommended the Cavalier up the street and I moved in that direction, noting as I went that he was paying close attention to my departing footsteps.
The bar hadn’t changed much at the Cavalier. I knew a few of the crowd, some because they’d been into the bank from time to time, others more intimately from school days, bowling alley contacts and the like. I ordered a rum highball and looked around. The bartender wasn’t anyone I remembered but I engaged him in general conversation, worked it around to details as I had with Marty Bruno, and announced that I was McCarthy by name and a truck driver with Tyler Trucking at present. I expected him to file it away for future reference; instead he terminated the social hour with all reasonable haste, slipped down to the section where
the girl waiting on table trade picked up drinks, and held a consultation over her next order. She started to glance my way, caught herself, and went off with an empty tray. I peered into my glass and then, keeping my head in the same position, swiveled my eyes to follow her in the mirror beyond the bar. She stopped momentarily near a blond babe and a rotund dark-haired man in one of the booths, spoke briefly, and moved on. As closely as I could judge angles in the mirror, it looked like they were giving me the cool once-over. I didn’t turn and a few minutes later they found a place at the bar next to me, the blonde between. With the light better I knew her now, and the man too. The blonde was Bo Brandell, a hotshot in high school, even before she added one “l” to her name and came up with something that rhymed with dell instead of handle. The guy was Sam Ward and there wasn’t anything tender about him. Mean and tough all the way. No bluff—Sam could lick about anybody on the playground when we were kids and he’d never been too careful about where he hit. He was fat now, a lot more suet on him than I’d carried even four years ago. I drank my highball in peace and waited for an opening bid. When it didn’t come I slid off the stool and went out into the night air once more.
They had sized me up all right; they had heard about the scrap with the teamsters local. And for some reason Sam Ward was interested enough to move up to the bar for a closer look at McCarthy. I grinned to myself and wondered if I could take Sam Ward now, if it came to that. He had me by a lot of pounds but it was the kind of weight you don’t mind giving away in a fight and he looked like soft living had made its mark. I was still weighing my chances as I turned into Gus Fogarty’s pool hall a few blocks farther on. There were other pool emporiums in town but Fogarty’s was only three doors from the Cab Company office. That’s why I was here.
“Get you something?” Gus asked. He limped toward the counter up front, the wooden triangle of his trade looped over his arm.
