The Devil Met a Lady

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  There were several approaches. I pulled my .38 out of the glove compartment, checked it, and got out, deciding on direct action rather than gamesmanship.

  I made my way back to the house, staying close to the bushes and light-deprived trees, my gun ready at my side. A car announced itself and I moved away from the bushes, tucked my gun in my belt, and nodded at the driver as he weaved past me, going deeper into this bypath of Coldwater.

  The house was on stilts to hold it back and up off the road, into a crevice in the hill. I climbed the wooden stairs.

  On the front porch I looked around, through the windows. Nothing. That didn’t mean no one was inside, only that I saw nothing. Birds were chirping and something was clacking in the bushes below. It could have been a rattlesnake.

  I moved to the end of the porch, carefully looking into windows and seeing nothing but an unmade bed. I tried the first window. It wasn’t locked. That didn’t mean it opened quietly. It squealed and I moved slowly, carefully inching it up, watching the door inside, ready to see Jeffers or Stevens rushing in with a cackling machine gun.

  No one came through that door. I got the window up and considered how best to go inside. My ribs warned me against anything stupid, and the rest of my body warned me about any movement, natural or unnatural.

  The hell with it. I took a deep breath and crawled over the sill, trying to ignore the noise which, since I must say it myself, wasn’t too bad. I got in, looked around, and headed for the door. I listened, heard nothing, tried the handle.

  “Surprise,” came Jeffers’s voice.

  I found myself facing Pinketts, Jeffers, and Stevens, all with weapons of various power aimed in my direction. Behind them stood Inez, biting her lower lip and not appearing to be happy with the situation, which was, at best, potentially unhealthy. “You made more noise coming in than Spike Jones and the City Slickers, and we could smell you before you opened the window.”

  “I’ve been sick,” I said, keeping my gun aimed at Jeffers.

  “And you sign up some pretty inept help,” he said. “That cabbie was as phony as Dewey’s promises. Even Matt saw through him.”

  There was no sign of Bette Davis or Wiklund. “I’d say we have an impasse here,” I said.

  “That the way you see it?” said Jeffers. “The way I see it, it’s more like a trap. We have three guns to your one, and ours are much, much bigger.”

  “I could shoot you before …” I began, but Jeffers was shaking his head.

  “Peters, you are not one of the wisest creatures put on this earth,” said Jeffers. “Far as I’m concerned, you can start shooting at any time. I’m a curious man and I’d say your chances look pretty shitty.”

  “Compromise,” I said. “I don’t put mine down. You don’t put yours down. Then it’s up to you if the shooting starts.”

  “Put it down, Toby,” Pinketts said wearily, with more than a trace of ersatz Latin-lover accent. “All we want is the record back.”

  “Andrea,” I tried. “They can’t be too happy with your running away with that record and letting me get my hands on it. Let’s change the odds and …”

  “Mr. Pinketts and Mr. Wiklund have reached an accommodation,” said Jeffers. “Mr. Pinketts led us to you last night and promised to be a good character actor in our little traveling troupe. We’re all arms-around-the-neck now. Comrades. Birds of a feather. We’ll throw each other birthday parties and become blood brothers.”

  “No Davis, no record,” I said.

  Jeffers shook his head and looked at Pinketts and Stevens. “Devil knows I tried,” he said, holding up his gun.

  “Stop it,” Inez screamed suddenly behind them. “I can’t stand it.”

  She stepped between the pointed guns and looked back and forth from me to the trio of bad guys. Her eyes were a little red and wild but they were brown and deep. Her mouth was wide and she smelled of some sweet perfume that managed to make its way through the poultice. The solid red dress she was wearing was veed down the front, and there was enough cleavage showing to grab my attention.

  “No one was supposed to die,” she cried. “He promised. I would come along. We’d …”

  She turned to me, almost pleading, standing in line of my .38.

  “… I was singing in this club in Kansas City, making a living, or almost, when Wiklund promised me the moon, the stars, and enough money to get my own bar, maybe not much of a bar, maybe in not much of a town, but something of my own. Was that a crime? I mean, after what I’ve been through in my life?”

  She was pointing to herself now and looking at me, since none of the three on the other side of the room seemed the least interested in her story.

  “I think it was a crime, Inez,” I said. “Now, if you’d just step off to the side.”

  “No,” she said defiantly, turning to face Jeffers, Pinketts, and Stevens. “No more killing.”

  “Get out of the way, Inez,” said Jeffers, through clenched teeth.

  “No,” she shouted. “Shoot me. Go ahead. Shoot me. Shoot me or get out. I’ve had enough. I’m going back to Kansas City. You go tell Wiklund I’m going to Kansas City. He can take his promises and … So shoot me or get out.”

  Jeffers shook his head.

  “Nothing works out, does it Peters?” he asked.

  “Not usually,” I agreed.

  “No percentage in shooting you, Peters,” Jeffers said. “We’ll let Farnsworth persuade you.”

  He motioned Stevens and Pinketts backward toward the door. They followed. Stevens looked disappointed. Pinketts looked relieved.

  “Peters,” said Pinketts. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “Why not? It makes life interesting.”

  And then they were gone, through the door. Out of the house. I considered aching my way after them, but what for? They didn’t have Bette Davis, and I couldn’t see what there was to be gained by reenacting the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

  A car started, skidded on gravel in front of the house, screeched its tires, and headed for who-the-hell-knows-where. I looked at Inez and put my gun away.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She shrugged and walked out of the room through a door in the rear wall. I followed her. We were in a small bedroom. There was a suitcase, a small one, on the bed. She went to the closet, took out a few slinky things and dresses, and began to fold them into the suitcase.

  “You know where they have Davis?” I asked as she packed.

  “I’ve got nothing, nothing,” she sobbed. “Look at this. How am I gonna get a job? No clothes. No … I live in a suitcase I schlep around the country. Is that a life?” She turned to me, hands on hips. “You know what he promised me?”

  “Wiklund?”

  “Wiklund,” she confirmed. “Promised me that no one would get hurt. I’ve been around long enough to know that it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Whose house is this?” I asked, as she moved to the bathroom, leaving the door open.

  “Who knows? Not Wiklund’s. He probably just borrowed it without the owner’s permission,” she said with a bitter laugh.

  She came out with a toothbrush and a small cloth sack with a drawstring. She threw them all in the suitcase and locked it.

  “There. See? That’s it. Thirty-seven years and that’s all I’ve got to show for my life.”

  “I’m almost fifty and I’ve got even less, except for a few hundred dollars,” I said. “A hundred cash as a grubstake if you tell me where Wiklund has Bette Davis.”

  Inez touched her hair and turned to me. “How do I look?”

  “Great,” I said. “Like Gene Tierney with a little meat.”

  “Can you give me a ride to a bus?”

  “The grubstake,” I reminded her. “I’ll give you a ride to Union Station.”

  “I could lie,” she said. “God knows, I’ve done it before, but I don’t know where they’ve got her. They want the record. They seem to want it as much as they want the bombsight plans. They’ll let her go if they get t
he record. There’s no other way, and I suggest you give it to Wiklund. Between you and me and whatever nuthouse he was in before I met him, he has some serious wires out of place in his head. Keep that record safe if you want Bette Davis back alive.”

  “It’s safe,” I said. “In my office.”

  She picked up her suitcase and started to move past me.

  “I can still use that ride,” she said. “If not, I better start walking.”

  “I’ll give you the ride and twenty-five bucks,” I said. “Should be enough to get you to K.C.”

  She stopped and looked at me. “They did a real tap dance on your face,” she said sympathetically. She was no more than a foot away. “I’m sorry,” she added, putting a hand on my chest.

  I made a face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, moving her hand to my face.

  “I’ll live,” I said. “You want to …”

  She was wearing low heels that brought her almost level with me. She leaned forward and kissed me. Her mouth was open. Mine wasn’t at first.

  “I could use some arms around me that don’t tell lies,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  “I’m a little tender and I smell like …”

  “Hold me,” she said.

  I held her and wondered how close we were coming to six o’clock and the moment Farnsworth was supposed to trade the record and plans for Bette Davis. Inez’s hair smelled great and her warm breasts against my chest felt even greater.

  “We’d …” I started.

  “You in a big hurry?” she asked, looking into my eyes, her face inches from mine, her skin smooth.

  “Not a big one,” I said.

  “I’d like to leave this city with a decent memory,” she said.

  She put down her suitcase and came into my arms, pressing tightly against me. I staggered back and we fell onto the unmade bed. I held back a scream of pain as I almost passed out.

  She was lying on top of me and I was trying to breathe but I couldn’t remember how. “I’ll be gentle,” she said.

  “I’m counting on it,” I answered, pulling her down to me.

  About twenty minutes later we picked up our clothes and got dressed. I never did find one of my socks. I wondered, when it came time to bill Farnsworth, if I’d charge him for new ones.

  I drove Inez to Union Station. We talked on the way, a little about Wiklund, Bette Davis, the record, a lot about what she was going back to.

  “It won’t be so bad,” she said, fishing a cigarette from her purse and lighting it. “I’ve got friends, or at least people I know, and I’ve got a good voice, but I don’t kid myself, I’d never make it on radio or the movies. Now it looks like I won’t even make it in the small-town saloon business. Don’t take this wrong, but I’m not interested in whatever it is Farnsworth has that Wiklund wants. What say you and me just sell the record back to Farnsworth and let him trade for his wife with Wiklund?”

  “I don’t go that way,” I said, pulling into the parking lot in front of the station.

  She took a deep drag, blew out smoke, and sighed.

  “With a couple thousand dollars we could spend a fun few years in a bedroom behind a bar in Bitter Creek,” she said, opening the door.

  “I’m a big-city kid,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my wallet.

  “Mistake,” she said, taking the forty I handed her. She looked at it and smiled.

  “Maybe,” I agreed.

  She leaned over and kissed me. Deep, tempting. I had a second of …

  “See you,” she said, stepping back as someone hit his horn behind me.

  I pulled away and watched her in my rearview mirror as she turned and walked slowly into the train station, one light suitcase in her hand.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We were down to the last option. I called Farnsworth from a pay phone in a gas station on Alameda, where I used up half of my remaining gas coupons. The next step would be going to No-Neck Arnie the mechanic and buying black market. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew in my heart of black hearts that I would. I’d only buy a little, enough to get me by till the next ration book was issued. I’d try to buy off my conscience with a minimum purchase and a lot of lying to myself. I could do it. I had done it before, but I sure would be happy when the damned war was over and I could tell myself lies without feeling responsible for lives.

  “They called,” he said. “They said you almost got Bette killed.”

  I didn’t answer. He thought things over and went on.

  “It’s still on. The Hollywood Bowl, but they changed the time. Now it’s ten tonight. They promised to have Bette there if …”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  “They said I should be there alone with the record and the plans for the bombsight,” he said. “Me, not …”

  “You want to give them the plans?” I asked gently.

  “No, but I don’t want them to hurt her.”

  “What about me giving them fake plans?”

  “He said they had an expert with them, the person they were planning to sell to. That person will examine the plans before the exchange is made. They may be lying. They may not be lying.”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Stay home. I’ll bring her back.”

  “You sound confident.”

  “I am,” I lied.

  “It’s my wife’s life.”

  “I know,” I said. “She’ll be home tonight.”

  I hung up before he could ask more questions for which I had no answers. I checked my old-man’s watch. It told me I was running out of time.

  On the way back to my office to pick up the record I was going to exchange, and the fake bombsight plans I was going to draw, I thought about women: Inez with her face to the window of the Twentieth Century Limited, looking out on fields of fruitless cornstalks and small, slow towns; Ruth in her bed, going for tough and brave and making it to scared and determined; Carmen behind the counter, living on the surface, thinking of her little boy; Anne. I imagined Anne some time just after we were married, her mouth soft, teeth white, breasts swaying, and her laugh. And then the round painted Gypsy face of Juanita tumbled in front of me and almost whispered, “Beware the ides of February.”

  I almost hit an ancient man in an old Ford who stopped suddenly and woke me from yesterday.

  I had the feeling that I didn’t smell quite so bad and I didn’t ache quite so much. There wasn’t much time to kill, but there was some.

  Even though it was after normal office hours when I hit Hoover, there was still traffic. The war had brought out the lost, the derelict, the walking wounded. Prostitutes, the shell-shocked, the boys and girls in uniform, searching the streets for a thrill, a memory, a story to tell that made them feel they had touched life in the big bad city before they were shipped out to search in dark, deep caves for determined and deadly Japanese soldiers.

  Los Angeles during the war was a fun place.

  I found a parking space not far from the corner, which was fine, because I wanted to stop at Manny’s. Manny specialized in tacos, but he had a varied menu which depended on what he happened to pick up at the market that morning or had left over from the decade before.

  Manny’s was usually open till seven or eight at night, though his real business was breakfast and lunch. The place was small, a dozen red-vinyl-topped swivel stools at the counter, half a dozen small tables against the wall. The place was narrow, but Manny maneuvered it with ample-bellied style.

  There were four customers in the place when I walked in: a couple of WACs at the back table, a lone old man in a suit reading a book and eating a salami sandwich on white at another table, and Juanita at her favorite stool.

  What could I do? I sat next to Juanita, who was working on a plate of tacos and a Pepsi. Juanita wasn’t as gaudily attired as she had been at Jeremy and Alice’s Edna St. Vincent Millay party, but she was the next best thing to a distress signal if you happened to be lost at sea. The skirt was long and purple, the
blouse baggy and red with gold and silver sequins, and the earrings about the size of H.M.S. Pinafore.

  “How’s it going, Toby?” she asked. “You look like dreck.”

  Manny pushed away from the wall, stowed his cigarette in an ashtray at the end of the counter, and waddled in our direction.

  “Thanks, Juanita. Life is treating me like a punching bag.”

  “But with moments,” she said, pointing a long painted fingernail at my bruised face. “Moments of animal bliss.”

  “Do me a favor, Juanita,” I said, as Manny hovered, looking bored. “Don’t tell me things about my past or my future. It doesn’t help.”

  Juanita looked at Manny in triumph. “See,” she said. “He’s learning. That’s the trick of it, Toby. You think knowing what’s coming will make it easier to deal with, but it doesn’t. It just makes you feel helpless.”

  “Then why tell people?” I asked, looking away from her and up at Manny’s bloodhound face.

  “Can’t help it,” she said, with a jangle of her giant bracelets as she reached for a taco. “In my blood, you know? Funny thing is people want to know. Was I right or was I right about the three kidnappings?”

  “You was right,” I said.

  “Couple of tacos, a Pepsi, and a coffee?” asked Manny.

  “And one to go,” I said.

  Manny nodded and wandered back toward the small kitchen.

  “Wanna know what I see for Bette Davis?”

  “No,” I said, pretending to look at the list of specials over the counter where the stale desserts were kept in a chiller that didn’t quite work.

  “Yes, you do, chum.”

  I said nothing.

  “She doesn’t have a good track record with the men,” said Juanita. “And she won’t. But she’ll have a long life.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I said, as Manny came back with the coffee and the Pepsi.

  “No hope about it, Toby. I’m the McCoy and you know it, but she wants more she’ll have to come see me or, as I told her, I’ll come see her. Truth is,” she whispered, “the seer business is good, has been since the war. Wasn’t too bad during the Depression, either. But people, kids going overseas want to know if they’re gonna make it.”