Tom didn’t stir. “No. I think it will be better for both of us if I just phone a friend and have him pick me up here. There isn’t any reason in the world why I should implicate you in my troubles.”
“They’ll be watching your friends. C’mon, I’ll get the tub filled for you. This is the safest place you could be, Tom.” She stood up. “This is probably the least policed area west of the Rockies.” She went through the doorway to the living room and a little later there was the sound of running water.
The phone was here in the kitchen and Tom stared at it, thinking of Nannie. Jean had told him to stay away from Nannie, but Jean had her personal reasons for that.
Tom rose painfully and went over toward the phone. He was just reaching for it, when Connie said from the doorway, “No. I don’t want any of your friends to know you’re here. You won’t blame me if I don’t trust your friends?”
“They’re not all like Joe,” Tom said. “I was going to call the boss.”
“The boss — ?”
“The big man. I was a bookie, you know.”
“I know. I don’t want any big men to know you’re here. If you stay here, it’s under my conditions. And I want you to stay until we can figure something. You bring out the maternal in me.”
Tom expelled his breath. The weariness of his flight and his pain was bone-deep now; he stared at her dully.
“Come on, lamb,” she said gently. “I’ll scrub your back.”
• • •
It wasn’t only the knee that was battered. He had a bruise as big as his hand, a nasty blue-black discoloration above his right hip.
When he was dry, she gave him a robe to wear and it figured that she would have a man’s robe around the house; she didn’t bother to explain why, which figured, too.
When he came out into the living room, she was relaxed in a huge, chartreuse chair, a frosted glass in her hand. She smiled amiably, “The stuff’s on the kitchen drainboard if you want one. Tom Collins.”
Tom shook his head. “Not now, thanks. Why do women want to protect me? I must be a perpetual adolescent.”
“I just like a man around the house,” she answered. “I don’t feel whole without a man around the house.” She sipped her drink and regarded him. “This place you ran from — this place you ruined the knee running from — was that a woman’s place, too?”
He started to shake his head, but paused. He made no gesture.
“All right,” she said, “it was. I won’t ask you her name. Why don’t you lie on the davenport, Tom? You’re safe here.”
He sat on the davenport, his back supported by one end. “I thought I was safe, there, too. I mean the place I just left. I might have been; it could have been a routine check. But the man brought a warrant. I can’t understand it. There was no way to connect us.”
“There must have been one way. And that could be a help, that could be a lead as to who killed them both.” She finished her drink. “But we’re not detectives, are we? And we don’t want to play detective, do we? We’re brighter than that.” She stood up. “I’ll mix you a weak one.” She started toward the kitchen.
“Wait — ” Tom said, and she turned. “I was thinking,” he went on, “that you made a good point there. And I was wondering if maybe what you know about Joe and what — ” He paused, suddenly realizing that had been a revelation.
She smiled. “Oh, a girl? A girl who knew Joe? I won’t guess. It would be too obvious. I’ll get your drink.”
When she came back from the kitchen, she had a pair of drinks in her hands. She handed him one. “No more palaver, Tom, about what she knows and I know. I never fight city hall.”
Tom smiled. “That’s what my cell-mate used to say — ’you can’t lick city hall.’ The knowledge didn’t keep him out of jail.”
She relaxed again in the chartreuse chair. “It’s kept me out. You know, I watched this Un-American Activities Committee on TV. I couldn’t feel sorry for a single one of those unfriendly witnesses. You think I’d make a fight for people like that?”
Tom studied her. “What brought that up? What’s that got to do with me, and Joe?”
“Nothing.” She put the cool glass to her forehead. “I wasn’t talking about you and Joe. I was talking about the unnamed girl you just left.”
“You think she’s a Commie?”
“I know she isn’t. Joe told me she isn’t. But so many of her friends were, by some chance. Joe and I used to laugh about her; tell her that next time you see her. She’s a hangover from the days when women were fighting for their rights. She’s trying to be her old man — with skirts.”
“You got her wrong,” Tom said. “Believe me, Connie, you got her way wrong. She’s a great girl.”
“Sure, maybe you weren’t impotent around her, eh? Lambie, don’t feed me any malarky on the girl. I saw her through Joe’s mind. And whatever we now think about that big bastard, he had a lot of mind, and he used it. Could we drop the subject?”
“Sure.” Tom sipped his drink, and it was weak. But cooling. “Sure — if it bothers you. Jealousy?” His smile was slight. “Joe did call her his fiancée.”
“Why not? It didn’t cost him anything. I don’t want to talk about her, Tom. I don’t enjoy being nasty.”
“All right. And I don’t want to talk about what a great guy Joe Hubbard was. Because he wasn’t.”
She smiled, this time. “Jealousy?”
Tom leaned back, stretching his shoulders. He rubbed his knee and felt its soreness. The ache was going, but the knee was tender to the touch. Some lassitude was coming to him. His voice was blurred. “What’s in this drink?”
Her voice seemed far away. “A sedative. I thought you needed it. Sleep, lamb.”
“No.” He struggled to sit upright. “I — can’t afford to — to sleep. I — ”
She came over to help him to a full reclining position. Her voice was soft and soothing. “You can’t afford not to, baby. You’ll need your strength when it’s time to run again.”
The fragrance of her came to him and he felt the supple strength of her long fingers massaging the tight muscles of his shoulders. The taut face looked strangely maternal; he seemed to be drowning in the warm, brown eyes.
Just before he fell asleep he wondered which was the true girl; those soft eyes, or the rest of her?
He slept lightly, and dreamed. He dreamed of Joe and Lois together and Joe and Connie and Joe and Jean. Joe remained constant, but the girl kept changing like the colored lights in a juke box. He was no more than half asleep; the dream was as much daydream as night dream. Joe was the melody, riding the bass.
Joe had obviously been quite a stud, but that was only one of the immoralities. A friend’s wife was no different from a professional girl to the true studs. And to judge it honestly, who was hurt by any of it? Unless a person lived by the intangibles, now old-fashioned and scorned by the realists.
And yet, hadn’t it brought Joe to a greater immorality? Wasn’t it logical to think that he had thrown his friend to the wolves because of it? What had Jean said? One corruption is all corruption.
No. A white lie for social reasons is a long way this side of murder. And marital relations between unmarried adults could be a corruption only in the minds of the religious hysterics.
Or was that just something he wanted to believe?
And how about Miss Jean Revolt, the incorruptible? She’d gone to bed with him quickly enough. With no apparent moral compunctions. Let her practice what she preached.
He thought of Lois and their honeymoon and one particular night when they had achieved ideal communion. He remembered how she trembled and the strange things she’d said.
She’d said, “When you’ve lost communication with your God, you keep seeking it in people, don’t you? And this seems to be the truest communication with people.”
Was it?
Communication it certainly was. But the truest? At the time he’d chided her for voicing what he then considered sacrile
ge. Lois had always believed what she wanted to believe; she could rationalize black into white. Lois would be no oracle on the moralities.
Dogs didn’t consider it communication; they didn’t need to rationalize. Nor did dogs pull down any shades. But of course, neither did dogs write poetry or build bridges or donate blood to the Red Cross or …
Where the hell was he going?
He opened his eyes and saw Connie still sitting in the big chair. She was reading a book. Outside, he could hear a steady stream of traffic and he guessed that the boys from Douglas were coming home from work. Douglas finished the day shift a little after four; he couldn’t have been sleeping long.
Tom asked, “What are you reading?”
She looked up and smiled. “Jack Woodford. Who else? This guy I can dig.”
“What did you give me, goof-balls?”
She shook her head. “Not quite. Euphased. It’s a partial sedative and a partial — well, do you know what euphoria is?” Tom shook his head.
“Well, it means a sense of well-being, of buoyancy. That’s what euphased gives you.”
“Not me. I’m punchy. My lips tingle.”
“Sleep, lamb. It must be that damned traffic. All the working stiffs are hurrying home so they won’t miss Roy Rogers.”
“I’d trade with any one of them.” He slid up to prop his head on the cushioned end of the davenport. “I can’t sleep. How the hell can I sleep with the law searching the town for me?”
She rose, and stretched. “They won’t be bothering this end of town. There aren’t enough cops for that. Could you eat? I could.”
“I suppose. Damn it, though, I should do something. If I’m not going to stay here and work, I should get ready to run, again. I’d feel a hell of a lot safer out of the country.”
“Patience. We want to be careful. You’ll be ready to run in a day or so, but not until you’ve got a decent chance to get away clean. Pork chops all right?”
“My favorite fruit. I feel like a pimp.”
“Easy, lamb. Think of what that would make me.” She grimaced and went into the kitchen.
She came back in a minute with a copy of the Daily News. “Here, make like a husband, while I fuss over a hot frying pan.”
There was nothing in the paper about Tom Spears. The flight from Jud Shallock’s might have been caused by a routine check, but the man who’d come to Jean’s had come prepared with a warrant. The fact that nothing about either visit was in the paper told Tom the police were sitting on this; they didn’t want to scare him out of town. They wanted him here. And Jean wanted him here.
Connie, the realist, shared his earlier view. Connie had been living on the same side of the fence as he had; her faith in what the authorities called justice had been dulled by the facts.
He looked out the window behind him and saw the constant flow of traffic along the narrow street. A large percentage of the cars were jalopies; these were the “B” assemblers, who lived in Venice. In front of the restaurant across the street, a heavy man lounged, chewing on a toothpick.
Cop? The cop look.
Tom called, “Connie, if you’re not tied up, I’d like you to inspect a man for me.”
There was the slam of the refrigerator door and then Connie came into the room, wonder on her face. “Now what?”
Tom indicated the window. “Loafing in front of the restaurant. He looks like a cop, sort of.”
The blonde studied him a moment and then shook her head. “I’ve seen him there before. If he’s a cop, this is his beat. I think he could be a new resident. I never noticed him until a week ago.”
Tom stared at her. “Over a week ago, I made my break.”
Her voice was quiet and warm. “Tom, you’re seeing ghosts. Stop it. Nobody knows about me and Joe, except you. We were never together except here. Joe was too big a man to be seen with Connie Garrity around town. I was surprised when he brought you here that night. Even drunk, Joe kept everything in its proper place.”
His attention left the window and centered on her suddenly bleak face. “And you’re still burning incense to the bastard’s memory.”
“He was a lot of man.” She straightened. “I don’t want to burn the pork chops.” She went out stiffly.
Back street girl, accepting the inevitable. Riding with the tide and mingling with the masses. What was called the easy way, a drifter in the back eddies, selling what she must and withholding what she could. And never whimpering. Audibly.
From the kitchen, she called, “Dinner’s ready.”
He glanced out once more at the restaurant across the narrow street. But the man was gone.
In the kitchen, she was already seated, and the bleakness was gone from her face, the stiffness from her posture.
As he sat across from her, Tom said, “As a kid I was always good at one game. ‘Run, sheep, run’; remember it?”
“Very well, lamb. I was kind of a flash at it, myself.” She held out a platter of chops. “Except, of course, when I wanted to get caught.”
He smiled. “Jean told me she used to run a lot, too. Her papa wasn’t always wealthy, you know.”
“Mmmm-hmmm. I know all about her. What line are we on, now?”
“I was thinking that maybe you envied her. Because she stopped running.”
The brown eyes regarded him impersonally. “Were you, really? For your information, I don’t envy her. I don’t even feel for her enough to pity her. Would you like to talk about the weather?”
“I’d rather talk about you.”
“All right, Mr. Spears, this is my routine.” She was helping herself to the potatoes. “I work in a rather dimly lighted place. If you have a flashlight, you might be able to read the headline on a Hearst newspaper, that dim. In that kind of light, I look pretty good.”
“You look pretty good, anyway.”
“No interruptions, please. If we have a real, woolly lamb who thinks I might be available, I suggest that I might, too, but the hell of it is, the bartender would beef if I left early. However, if we should buy a bottle of champagne to take along, the bartender would not beef too much. More potatoes?”
Tom shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“The champagne is not a good vintage, you understand, so it only costs between fifteen and twenty-five dollars a bottle, depending on how flush the lush looks. We are about to depart with it, when I suggest we open it and have one cozy drink between the three of us, for auld lang syne. Cute?”
Tom nodded, smiling. “And then you leave?”
“After one drink? No, I suggest another, and the bottle seems to disappear, and the lamb suggests we take off, but where is the bottle we are going to take along to my place? We must have another.”
“But finally you do leave with the sucker?”
“Who can tell? He is getting drunk; if in the bartender’s judgment, he is being unruly, he might get the old heave ho.”
“You can’t get much repeat business that way.”
“Enough to make me wonder about them. Some people love to be abused; I think there’s a name for the type.”
“I know what you mean. But isn’t there ever a time when — ” Tom paused, shrugging.
“There is occasionally a time, yes. If he is an exceptionally woolly lamb. I can’t keep my hands off the really woolly ones.”
“Even after you met Joe?”
“I didn’t have anything left for the lambs after I met Joe.”
From the street below came the wail of a siren, and Tom stiffened in his chair. Then, it wailed again, farther up the street.
Connie said softly, “If sirens bother you, you’re in the wrong neighborhood, Tom. Most of them are ambulances, down here.”
He relaxed in his chair.
Connie said, “Speaking of ambulances, how about that knee?”
“It’s sore, but a lot better. It’s going to be all right, I think.”
“It’s got to be, before you leave here. You may have to move fast on the road.”
When he turned around, again, he found her staring at him. “If you run? When did you get this change of heart?”
“I’m not sure I have. But I’m also not sure that running solves a damned thing.”
“It might solve the problem of your continued existence. Or isn’t that important? Maybe that euphased hasn’t worn off.”
“It’s worn off. Connie, I want to be free. Women want security, I know, but all men want is to be free.”
“In the clink, you’d be free?”
“I didn’t kill my wife. If I can prove that, I’ll be free again.”
“Gawd,” she said, “And you a former bookie.” She held up her cup to be filled. She shook her head and looked sadly past him.
He filled his own cup and put the pot back on the stove. “I won’t stay here, of course. That would be criminal. I’ll get in touch with what few solvent friends I can trust and find a place to operate from. Jean might have some angles, by now. She was getting some — material this afternoon. I’ll get in touch with her.”
“Not tonight, you won’t. They probably have her phone tapped, right now.”
“All right, not tonight. But some way, tomorrow.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“If you have a car,” Tom suggested, “I could go to a booth in another section of town and phone some people. I wouldn’t want the call traced back to here.”
“Not tonight, Tom. We’ll watch television and get drunk.” She smiled. “Not too drunk, though, huh? I don’t want you to have any excuses, in case you should get ideas.”
Chapter 6
HE DIDN’T get any ideas. Maybe it was the drug she’d given him or maybe it was the soreness of his knee or maybe it was because he’d made his decision Jean’s way. At any rate, they sat and watched TV, a western movie involving some men in light hats and some men in black hats and a chase and a fine fight and ricocheting bullets, and then a chase started, again — and Tom fell asleep on the davenport.
When he wakened, the room was dark and his shoes were off and there was a blanket over him and a pillow under his head. The lustful Florence Nightingale, the collector of lost lambs, the Grade-? “B” girl …
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