Brute In Brass

by Harry Whittington

  She blushed across her nose. “Why, in the morning. I went with Penny.”

  “Is that where you met Gilmore?”

  “He’s Penny’s Sunday school teacher.”

  “He sounds real exciting.”

  “No. You’d think him dull, if you ever met him. But I— don’t see why you should.”

  “How did you know at church in the morning that you wouldn’t see me all day?”

  “Oh, Mike.” She tightened her hand on my arm. “Come back, Mike. Please. In the bedroom.”

  “No.”

  “Mike. Listen. I called you for two hours before I went to church. I expected you all Saturday night, and when you didn’t come—”

  “Is that why you invited Gilmore to come over here for dinner?”

  “No, Mike. I might as well tell you the truth.”

  “Oh, please do.”

  “He asked me last Sunday to go to the art exhibit this afternoon. I told him no, Mike. And I meant it. But—yesterday at church, when I’d called and you didn’t answer—you didn’t even bother to tell me you wouldn’t see me. That’s when I told him I would go.”

  “Pretty serious, this character.”

  She held her head high. “He wants to marry me.”

  I shifted my coat up on my shoulders. “This is serious. How long has this been going on?”

  “Mike, I saw him only at church. Maybe—we’d talk a little while afterward. He found out I was interested in p-painting.”

  “What time’s he coming over?”

  She bit her lip. “About two.”

  “Oh? I’ll drop back. I’d like to meet him.”

  Her fingers tightened. “Mike. Please.”

  “Don’t you want me to meet him?”

  “Why do you want to? Why would you want to?”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to meet the man who’s going to marry my girl?” I pulled her hand from my arm. “There are a lot of things I should tell him. The way your feet are always cold, the way you’ll put them against his back if he isn’t careful...”

  “Oh Mike. Please.”

  “You are my girl. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know, Mike.” She put her hands up to my face. “Anything you want, Mike. Now. Please.”

  “What would Donald Gilmore think if he heard you talking like that?”

  “I’ll go to the exhibit with him, Mike. Then I’ll tell him I have a headache. By then it will be true. I won’t have supper with him. I’ll call you as soon as I get him to leave.”

  “All right.” I looked at her. “You’ll be happier that way, baby. One thing you want to remember. Stay away from any man that’s fool enough to get married.”

  Chapter Five

  I didn’t get back to my own apartment until ten o’clock that night. When I came along the corridor, I saw this woman sitting against the window at the end of it.

  She sagged, her shoulders rounded, all her weight on the cheap pumps she wore. There was nothing about her to interest me, and whatever her body might have been was concealed under this brown cloth coat she had buttoned and then moored together with a brown purse clasped in her hands. Her hands were dishwater pink, and that was enough for me. I would never have given her another thought. She glanced at me and then exhaled, sagging some more until I stopped before my door and fitted my key into its lock.

  “Mr. Ballard?”

  She got up and came away from the window. The sagging sense of despair was gone. She walked to me and tried to smile. Her face was drawn with weariness, the kind that comes when you’ve waited a long time.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Ballard, may I come in? I’d like to talk to you. It’s most important.”

  I glanced at her, trying to find something to make it worth-while, and not finding anything. She had housewife written all over her. She’d brushed her brown hair, but it sagged too, by now. This girl wasn’t used to staying up after ten p.m.

  “It’s pretty late,” I said.

  “I know it’s late,” she said. “I know it’s very late to annoy someone. If it wasn’t so important, I certainly never would.”

  “All right. Come on in.”

  She glanced along the hall, the housewife about to enter a strange man’s apartment. I waited for her, then I closed the door. I swear she jumped slightly when she heard the lock click.

  “Locked from the outside,” I said. “From the inside it opens slick. Any time you turn that knob.”

  She tried to smile. “Thank you, Mr. Ballard. You—you’re kind to put me at my ease this way.”

  I went around the living room shoving windows open. I glanced at the telephone. I wondered if Hilma had called, when she’d call back, if she’d had an exciting day with Donald Gilmore.

  I went back to where she stood, feet close together, toes pointed and prim.

  “Can I take your coat?”

  “I can’t stay.” Then she nodded. “If you will.”

  She unbuttoned her coat and slipped out of it. She wore a gray dress that had cost maybe six dollars. It was belted about her waist and there was a dip in the hem. Her mind was on something besides clothes, and yet I had the feeling she’d chosen this dress to wear here, because she felt it made her look nice.

  I laid her coat across a straight chair near the door and put her purse on top of it.

  She stood right there and looked around. “It’s beautiful,” she said. She smiled, but I saw she had to remember to smile. “It’s not what you’d expect a cop to have.”

  “Saves gas.” I said. “I walk to work mornings, go without lunch, rob old women. It’s easy.”

  She remembered to smile again.

  I said, “Why don’t you sit down and relax and tell me who you are.”

  “Thank you. I’d like to sit down.” But she didn’t. She walked across to the bookcases and looked at the books. “These are beautiful. I always loved to read. I don’t know. Lately, I haven’t had much time for reading—and just haven’t felt like it.”

  I walked over to my big easy chair under a reading lamp, flopped down in it. I put my feet up on the ottoman and watched her.

  “All these beautiful books.” She drew her hand across them. “I think the last book I read was The Caine Mutiny. Did you read The Caine Mutiny?”

  I glanced toward the telephone, hoping it would ring.

  She turned then and faced me, her cheeks pale. “I’m not insane, Mr. Ballard. Not entirely anyhow. My name is Peggy Walker. I’m—Earl Walker’s wife.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I know what you told Earl. He told me. All of it, including what he called you. I told him you would forgive him. I told him you understood he was sick and frightened.”

  “And you could have told him I didn’t give a damn what he called me.”

  “He asked me to come to see you.”

  I looked at her, the frightened eyes, the pallor in her cheeks. All I could think of was I wanted to get her out of here.

  “Good,” I said. “We can settle this in a hurry. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Earl. There’s nothing I can do for him. Nothing anybody can do. I’m sorry.”

  I glanced toward the telephone, wondering why Hilma didn’t call. I supposed she was angry again because I had not come straight home from work and waited for her to phone. Damn. With pressure from the commissioner, from Luxtro, from Burgess and the department, things were snarled. There was no longer any pleasure being with Hilma as long as she made noises like a wife.

  I sat there and looked at the girl. I saw her gaze waver under mine. There was something about her. I wanted her out of here; I didn’t want to hear the name Earl Walker again as long as I lived. She had to go, even if she did have nice slender ankles. My gaze moved upward. Her breasts stood taut under that gray frock, taut like a young girl’s, and full like a woman’s.

  I poured myself a drink. For the moment I didn’t touch it. I felt pretty good. She hadn’t looked like much at first, another stricken wife
full of misery over her husband.

  “Earl was a good husband, Mr. Ballard.” Peggy went on standing there, ill at ease. She didn’t run, but looked as if she wanted to. “We were married five years before this happened. He was faithful to me—I’m sure of it. I never suspected anything.”

  “Yeah. You want a drink?”

  She seemed not to hear me. She went on standing there, like a doe poised for flight, tense in every muscle, and those full breasts standing high against her dress.

  “He worked as a salesman. Did you know that, Mr. Ballard?”

  I didn’t tell her I didn’t know and couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t say anything. I just sat there with this drink in my hand, watching her over the top of it.

  “Yes. He was a salesman. That’s why he acted so cocky and so full of life. It was part of his job to be like that. A salesman has to be—well-met, Mr. Ballard. He’s always got to know jokes, and have something pleasant to say, and smile whether he feels like it or not. Earl always was fine about that. No matter how badly he felt, he smiled. And the funny thing was, he was nice like that at home. So many men, when they’re forced to be pleasant all day, act kind of like bears when they get home. But not Earl. Earl never did.”

  “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

  She was staring at something I could not see. She was remembering something so far in the past that it might as well never have happened.

  “We never had any children. We wanted to, but we just never did. Something—I don’t know. Maybe it was me.”

  I didn’t think it was her fault. I sipped the whisky, just sipped it. The burning taste felt good in my mouth. I told myself to forget it. This little housewife was no good for me. Poison. I had plenty of that. I didn’t give a damn for her. You saw twenty just like her every morning in the nearest supermarket. Nothing wrong with me that an hour with Hilma Kenyon wouldn’t cure. My glands were acting up because I’d been thinking about Hilma all day and hadn’t spent the night with her since—hell, last Wednesday. No wonder she was burned. I’d have to buy her something nice.

  “We were happy, Mr. Ballard. We never had very much. And Earl drank some. I forgave him because he had to drink in his work, and it was hard to cut it off just because it was six o’clock at night. He spent some evenings at a tavern near home. But I knew he was there, sometimes friends would drop in and I’d run down there to get Earl, and he’d be there, and smile when I told him we had guests. That was all, Mr. Ballard.”

  She stood there as rigid as if she’d turned to stone. “He met this Ruby Venuto. He admitted he knew her and that he had gone to her place a couple of times. You—you’ll just never know how hurt and shocked I was when Earl admitted that. But that makes no difference, Mr. Ballard. It was just a mistake—and it’s not murder like they say.”

  She went through it, talking slowly, her voice flat and dead. I made up my mind to one thing. I was going to hear it all. I finished off my drink and poured another. She didn’t stop talking. The police came and arrested Earl, and he swore to her that he was innocent. She sat with him in his cell at the city jail that night and knew something was wrong with him, but didn’t know what. He acted strangely, but she supposed both of them did. It must have been the shock, she decided.

  “Can you see that, Mr. Ballard? Can you see that I spent five years loving Earl, and knowing what he was like, his strength and his weaknesses. And I loved him. I couldn’t turn from him just because everybody else did.”

  There it was again, the something different about this Peggy Walker. There was a shaft of iron through this girl. She wasn’t exactly like all the twenty wives you see in the supermarket. She was different, and I began to see just how different.

  “At first there was nothing but terror, Mr. Ballard. That was what I lived in, all day and all night. I could not believe it was true. I kept thinking every night that Earl would come walking in the front door, throw his hat on a chair and call for me. You know?

  “Then the trial. The things the police said. It was as if they were talking about some stranger. They were lies. Maybe they didn’t mean to tell lies, but that’s what they did. Almost all the way, they were wrong about Earl. There were only a few points that were true. He did know Ruby Venuto. He had been to her apartment. He had been picked up near there that night. He never told me why—maybe he wanted to see her and was fighting inside himself trying to stay away. I like to think that’s what it was, anyhow.”

  “Yes. I’m sure you do.”

  Something in my voice jerked her out of the trance. She stared at me.

  Her voice went firm. “That’s what it was. I know it. Earl won’t say. It’s because he’s truthful. He—we agreed he’s got to stick to the exact truth, Mr. Ballard. Time is running out and nothing but the exact truth can save him. Do you see that?”

  “If anything will.”

  “So Earl won’t say what he was doing near her apartment that night, because he says he doesn’t even know for sure himself.”

  “Drunk,” I said. “He sat in a bar, got drunk, went up to see her, they had a slug fest and he—”

  “No!”

  “You’re hard to convince.”

  “I know what I believe. I believe in Earl. I believe in his innocence. I admit I was hurt when I learned he’d fallen for that Venuto woman, but she was lovely and exciting, and I was plain, and we’d been married five years. If I’m human at all, I’d have to forgive Earl—and I do forgive him. I still love him. I’d make every effort to make a new life with him if only he were free.”

  Something nagged at me now, something that I could not pin down. But it hit me hard when I looked at her, something about her, something that made her so different that maybe you never saw another one just like her in any supermarket.

  “Takes a lot to cure you, doesn’t it?”

  “I married Earl. For good and all. In five years we were happier than any of the other couples we knew. We were faithful—”

  “You were faithful.”

  “Except for Ruby Venuto, we both were. Don’t you think, Mr. Ballard, that every man meets an exciting and thrilling woman like Ruby Venuto at some time in his life?”

  “I’d like to think so.” I poured another drink.

  She glanced at me. “So maybe our life wasn’t perfect. It was what I wanted. I married Earl and I’m old enough to know life’s not always as good as you want it to be. But when a man’s what you’ve always loved, what you married, you don’t stop loving him just because he breaks your heart.”

  I reached over on the side table, pulled another glass near me and sloshed in some whisky.

  “Sit down,” I said. She nodded and sat on the edge of the divan, knees primly together, skirt over them. She knotted her hands on her knees.

  “Mr. Ballard, there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to have my husband proved innocent. I know he’s innocent. He begged me to ask you to help him. He said you were the toughest man he’d ever met, and that you tried to be honest with him, and that if you ever made up your mind to do something, nothing in the world could ever stop you.”

  I glanced at her legs, at her prim knees, her locked hands, thinking about what she’d said and applying it to her.

  I picked up her drink and held it out. We were only a few feet apart. She leaned forward to take the small glass. .

  Our hands touched. She reacted as though she’d been burned. She withdrew as though frightened. I sat there with the drink extended, watching her.

  For the first time I realized how deeply in hell this girl was. It never occurred to me that it would be a trial by fire for her to come alone to my apartment. She was so afraid of me that she had to lock her hands together to keep them from trembling.

  I’d forgotten there were women like her. I didn’t meet many in my job. It underlined the way she felt about Earl Walker. No matter what she ever had to do for him, nothing would be much tougher than having to come here, as he told her to come, and beg me to help him.

/>   I put the drink on the end table at the end of the divan. She nodded, thanking me. She reached out, picked it up. She held it against her lips and drank once, fast, holding her breath, closing her eyes. She exhaled heavily through parted lips.

  “Another one?” I said.

  “I’m not used to drinking.”

  “Didn’t you ever drink with Earl?”

  Her smile was wan. “Sometimes. Mostly though I drank Cokes. I can’t drink very much. I never could.”

  She put the glass on the end table beside her. I breathed in deeply, took the bottle, got up and poured the small tumbler full to the brim. I went back, put the bottle down. I started to sit in the chair, changed my mind. I took my drink and flopped on the divan beside her.

  “You must be pretty lonely, with Earl up in that jail?”

  “I’m all right. I get along all right.” She stared straight ahead at an oil painting Hilma had selected and hung on my wall.

  That nagging something struck at me again, pinging around in my brain. I tried to catch the thought and hold it long enough to understand it, but it slipped away.

  “It’s been a long time,” I said. “Earl’s been away almost a year. You must know some other man pretty well by now.”

  Her chin tilted, her mouth quivered. After a moment, she turned and her gaze struck against mine, eyes so brown they looked black.

  “No.” She trembled suddenly as though she were cold. Her voice got odd. “This may sound crazy to you, Mr. Ballard, but Earl and I—well, not even from the first.” Her face was hot now and her breathing was fast. “What you’re talking about—it wasn’t a big part of our life.” She pressed the back of her hand against her cheek. “Maybe that’s why I was able to forgive Earl—about Ruby Venuto, I mean. Maybe I did fail him.”

  I felt better. The thought that had been nagging at me hit me suddenly with clarity. I knew what was the matter with this girl. She’d been married to Earl Walker for five years, and he’d been away from her for a year. It was as though she’d spent six years sleeping, and all the years of her life before that sleeping. Nobody had awakened her. She wanted something and didn’t even know what it was she wanted. It was in every move she made, the way her hands knotted, the way she walked, the look in her eyes, in the thrust of her breasts, the color that rose to her cheeks.