Square in the Middle

by William Campbell Gault

  SQUARE

  IN

  THE

  MIDDLE

  WILLIAM

  CAMPBELL

  GAULT

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  For Les Savage, Jr.,

  &

  William R. Cox,

  A couple of pros

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Also Available

  Copyright

  one

  Heeney’s is only a block from my office, but I’d never stopped in there until the summer Carol and the kids took the cabin at Arrowhead. Heeney’s is a bar and I don’t generally stop in at bars when I’m alone, for some reason. I guess I never really left the Corn Belt. Iowa’s my birthplace — Ames, Iowa.

  But the house would be lonely and somebody had told me Heeney’s had fine steaks.

  Coming into it from the still bright street outside, it looked unusually dim and unusually quiet. It probably wasn’t; I’m no expert on bar atmospheres.

  The color scheme was charcoal and pink and there was quiet music coming from small corner speakers. The booths were upholstered in a quilted pastel pink plastic; I took a corner booth.

  There was a couple at the bar, I remember, and a girl sitting alone in a corner booth opposite mine. The single waitress was stocky and a bleached blonde, the bartender was big and white-jacketed. The bartender was Heeney, though I didn’t know it at the time.

  The girl alone in the booth was Lynn Bedloe and she had left my office less than an hour ago. She smiled very slightly as our eyes met and then ignored me.

  I ordered the special filet and the waitress wanted to know if I wanted a drink first. I ordered a martini. They are no favorites of mine, but looking back on it I realize that Lynn had a martini in front of her. If there’s any significance in that, it’s beyond me.

  Lynn Bedloe looked even younger in this dim light than she had looked in my office. But she was one of those slim and doe-eyed little girls who look mature at fourteen and never seem to get beyond eighteen until the sag and the wrinkles come.

  She was wearing a yellow blouse and a brown skirt and there was a white cashmere sweater on the chair near her booth. She looked very open-air American and California-ish, brown-haired, brown-eyed, healthy and alive.

  She also looked a little pensive, this evening, but girls alone in bars with martinis are always pensive in books or movies. And from my short conversation with her this afternoon, I could guess this girl would be self-conscious enough to follow the ritual.

  I am not accustomed to drinks designed to be sipped; my first martini was finished long before my steak was ready. I ordered another. The loud-speakers in the corners brought forth an old one, Dinah Shore’s recording of “I Walk Alone,” and I thought back to the war and I thought of Carol.

  Nine years ago that war had ended and I’d come out of it with nothing worse than some shrapnel in my chest and right shoulder. I had come out of it with a few medals and a yen for the quiet life. Nine years ago our marriage had been only three years old.

  And now Carol and I had two kids, Jim, Jr., who was ten, and the golden Sue, aged eight. I had half of a business which had netted me eighteen thousand dollars last year, which isn’t bad at thirty-four. And I had a three-bedroom, two-bath California farmhouse in Pacific Palisades, a new Olds and a one-year-old Ford, and a growing boredom with my quiet life.

  My steak still wasn’t ready; I ordered a third martini.

  Actually, I felt more than boredom; it was annoyance I lived with, a growing fretfulness. Perhaps it was even a sense of — guilt. I’m in the loan business and at times that can bruise the conscience of a boy from Ames, Iowa.

  From the speakers came “I Love Paris” and the waitress brought my steak. Three martinis on an empty stomach had made me a little giddy; the steak settled me again.

  But there was still a definite alcoholic edge to my viewpoint. The place still looked uncommonly pleasant and the girl alone in the booth still looked unreasonably desirable.

  She was eating a sandwich now. Then a man came through the doorway from the street. He stood for a moment in the dimness, looking around. He waved at the bartender, and walked over to the booth where the girl sat.

  He bent over to kiss the top of her head and then sat in the booth opposite her. I don’t know why that should have annoyed me.

  I had finished my steak and my coffee; there wasn’t any further reason for me to linger. I certainly didn’t intend to put any whiskey on top of those martinis.

  I ordered a gin and tonic and thought of Max. Max had become Schweppes-conscious in the recent promotional splurge and had introduced me to the drink. Max liked to be up on things like that.

  Max fit into this California scene better than I did. He dressed more expensively and read all the right columns. He and his wife moved around a lot more socially than Carol and I did. Max is two years younger than I am and more aggressive. We don’t get along too well, but Carol insists that I need him in the business. Max is my partner.

  I suppose I’m the front man. I have one of those Iowa faces, Carol tells me, one of those honest, earthy faces that inspires confidence in the hearts of the desperate borrowers.

  Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing seriously illegal about the firm of Gulliver-Schuman. You don’t need to be illegal to make an adequate living in the loan business.

  Two girls and another man came through the doorway now. They, too, waved at the bartender and then went over to join the occupants of the corner booth.

  I finished my drink and paid my bill and went out. I think, if Lynn Bedloe hadn’t been joined by her friends, I would have stayed at Heeney’s until she had left. I’ve no experience in picking up girls in bars, but with a few more drinks the miracle could happen, I suppose.

  She stuck in my mind. I went home and watered the lawn. After that, I had a shower and tried to get into one of Carol’s book-club books. It was slow going.

  I quit reading and turned on the TV but there was nothing of interest on the screen this evening. I checked the movie ads in the paper; the only ones that looked good to me were at theatres too far away to consider.

  I continued to think of Lynn Bedloe and I remembered the smell of her perfume in my office. I’m not a saint; I’ve thought of girls before, briefly and personally and appraisingly, though nothing had ever developed from the thoughts. I’ve read somewhere that infidelity can be mental, but if that’s true, I’m sure there’s not a stainless marriage in the world.

  At ten o’clock, Max phoned. He’d left the office early that afternoon and he wanted to know if anything of importance had happened after he left.

  “A woman wants a first mortgage on a little place in Santa Monica Canyon. I don’t think it’s our kind of deal; she probably wants some cheap money. We didn’t get much beyond the talking stage. As a matter of fact, I haven’t even got her address, just her name.”

  “Unless she’s an idiot,” Max said, “she wouldn’t come to us for a first mortgage.”

  “Maybe Bay Shore will take it. I may look at the house if I can get her address.”

  “Sure, it doesn’t hurt. You’re not alone, boy, are you?”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Huh!” he said. “My wife should go to Arrowhead. Little Maxie would keep busy.”

  “I’m from Iowa,” I told him.

  “Yes, baby, I know. You must have been on some hay rides, though.”

  “Only with
Carol,” I said. “We started going together in high school.”

  “My, my,” Max said. “Well, I taught you the loan business; if I get a chance, I’ll try to explain some of these other games to you.”

  “All right, Max,” I said. “Give my love to Adele.”

  He chuckled. “Touché. See you in the morning, Jim.” He paused. “Unless you run into something interesting tonight. Don’t worry about the office; I can handle it.”

  “Good night, Max,” I said, and hung up, annoyed.

  He hadn’t taught me the loan business. We’d started in it together, both of us green as grass. And as for his being able to handle the office alone, I doubted it. People don’t trust Max, for some reason.

  I would have preferred being in business alone, now, but our money was mixed up in so many loans, it would have taken a platoon of C.P.A’s to properly divide the assets of the firm. And Carol might be right; I might need Max’s cold eye and stone heart.

  The legal rate for trust deeds in California is ten percent, and if it hadn’t been for Max, we’d probably still be operating on ten percent.

  Installation of the “commission” gimmick had been Max’s idea. It’s very simple. The buyer comes in for a loan. We try to determine how desperate he is. If he’s not too desperate, we explain that we can arrange to get some ten percent money from a client of ours for a commission of — oh, let’s say ten percent. It could be a client’s money, in which case we get only the ten percent commission. Or it could be our money under another person’s name. In which case our money is working at twenty percent.

  The interest rate doesn’t vary; it’s the legal limit, ten percent. But our commission varies with the need and desperation of the borrower, and the color of his skin. Negroes pay more than Caucasians. That’s standard practice in the loan field and an attitude to which too many Negroes submit.

  In the personal loan field in this state, the legal limit is two and a half percent a month on the first hundred dollars and two percent a month on the rest. Two and a half percent a month is a legal thirty percent a year and there are angles that can send it well above that. Max had a hankering to get into it, until we learned what the default rate was in the field.

  So we settled for good, solid first and second trust deeds at an earning rate of from twenty to forty percent. And at thirty-four, I lived in the Palisades, well-fed and respected, and Max lived in Brentwood, happy and self-satisfied.

  The house yawned at me. I turned on the TV again and turned it off. I went out to my car and drove over to Santa Monica.

  I walked into Heeney’s without looking over at the corner booth. The man behind the bar must have remembered me, because he said, “Back for a night cap?”

  “That’s right. Gin and tonic.”

  He mixed it and looked up at me. “Didn’t I see you at a Chamber of Commerce meeting last week? Aren’t you Mr. Gulliver?”

  I nodded. “Jim Gulliver. Are you Mr. Heeney?”

  “That’s right, Al Heeney.” He held out his hand.

  I shook it and said, “Very pleasant place you have here, Al. And that’s a fine steak you serve.”

  “Thank you.” He moved down the bar to serve another customer.

  I managed to glance casually over toward the corner booth. It was empty.

  Heeney came back. “Aren’t you in with Max Schuman? The loan business, isn’t it? Next block?”

  “That’s right. We’re partners. Do you know Max?”

  “Not real well. I guess everybody knows Max a little. He sure gets around. Live wire, isn’t he?”

  “Very active,” I said. “He keeps me humping. I guess I’m kind of lazy, by nature.”

  Heeney smiled. “Aren’t we all?”

  I took a shallow breath. “That girl in the corner booth tonight, that Miss Bedloe — uh, what does she do for a living? Do you know?”

  Heeney continued to smile. “I know the girl. I don’t think she does much of anything.” He shook his head. “That — gang …”

  “Gang …? You mean the people who joined her later?”

  “Yup. This is kind of their stamping ground, I guess. I got nothing against any of them, and I like that Lynn Bedloe, but I mean — what the hell …” He shrugged. “I mean, they get a lot of laughs and all and I get plenty of business from them, but …” He stopped and shook his head again.

  “Butterflies?” I asked.

  “That’s the word. All they’re after is a good time. No roots to ‘em.”

  “Maybe they’re smarter than we are, Al,” I said. “Maybe we’re just a couple of squares.”

  “Maybe. But I notice when one of these butterflies dies, somebody else has to pay to bury him.”

  “Al.” I asked him, “do you really care who pays to bury you?”

  He drew a short beer and looked at it. He sipped it, and shrugged. Finally, he said, “I’m a married man. I got a pair of fine boys. Hanging around a bar isn’t my idea of a good time.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “Don’t crowd me.”

  He laughed and I laughed and the quiet speakers gave us the voice of Eartha Kitt. I had another drink and nursed it for half an hour, but Lynn Bedloe didn’t come back.

  I was in bed by midnight.

  • • •

  I wakened about seven next morning and listened for the sound of someone moving in the house. Then I remembered I was alone, and I filled the coffeemaker and plugged it in before going to the bathroom.

  In the mirror, as I shaved, I looked at my Iowa face, my honest, open face. Was this the face of a man contemplating infidelity? Was this the face of a chaser?

  Neither the mirror nor my conscience answered me.

  I was at the office earlier than usual, but Miss Padbury was already there. Miss Padbury is always there, it seems, when I leave at night and arrive in the morning. She is a placid and attractive woman of about thirty-five and she handles all the office detail, including the books.

  She smiled at me. “You look happier than usual this morning. Good news?”

  “My wife’s away,” I said, “and I can watch the boxing on television. Is Mr. Schuman in yet?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  I started toward my office, and then turned back. “Don’t I usually look happy, Miss Padbury?”

  “Not for the past six months or so.” She glanced at some papers on her desk. “I don’t want you to think of that as any kind of complaint.” She looked up again to face me candidly.

  “I wasn’t,” I told her. “I was simply surprised that my mood should be apparent. I suppose it’s — the state of the world.”

  She nodded. “You’re not the only troubled person around, Mr. Gulliver. One doesn’t see too many smiles today.”

  I nodded, and went into my office. Three smiles greeted me there. The photographs of Carol, Sue and Jim, Jr., stared at me genially from the wall above the safe.

  And there’d been smiles in that booth last night; there’d been laughter. Miss Padbury just didn’t get around to the right places.

  At 9:30, I had an appointment with the agent of an aging cinema queen. In a television world, we get a number of loan inquiries from movie people and most of them send their agents in as advance scouts.

  This particular woman wanted to go to New York, to try to peddle her remembered name to people unfamiliar with her financial position.

  It was a situation that Max would have milked to the last desperate dollar. But I remembered the trips she’d made during the war, the miserable advanced positions she’d visited with her troupe, the small and lonely outposts.

  Her small house in Santa Monica was clear. I told her agent, “I can get you six thousand on a first trust deed.” I took a deep breath and added, “Hillview Building and Loan money at six percent.”

  He smiled cynically. “And what commission for you?”

  “None.”

  He frowned.

  I said, “I saw Miss Ritter put on a memorable show in Italy, when I was
in the service. I — think she’s — wonderful.”

  He stood up. “I think so, too. But what will Schuman say when he hears of this?”

  I smiled. “He’ll scream. He’s a relative of yours, isn’t he?”

  The agent shook his head. “His wife is my wife’s second cousin. That’s enough for Max to claim the blood relationship. How did you ever get tied up with a schmo like that, Jim?”

  “Max is all right,” I said. “You have to understand him. But Sam, loans like this you don’t have to bring to — to people like — like us. Any bank will give you six thousand on a clear Santa Monica house in this kind of neighborhood.”

  “I know. But I brought you all the others, so I thought you should have the sound ones, too. But I don’t get this — you not making a nickel on it.”

  “I’ll get one percent from Hillview,” I said.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, all right. Sentimentality I can understand, so long as it doesn’t get out of hand. You’re a good man, Jim Gulliver.”

  “Thanks, Sam. Tell Max that, will you?”

  At that moment, we heard the outer door open and then Max talking to Miss Padbury.

  Sam Gross looked at me and said, “I think I’ll tell him right now. I love to see Max flinch.” He went out.

  I was talking on the phone when Max came in later. He looked irritable and restless and some nastiness in me made me prolong the phone conversation beyond its reasonable limit.

  When I’d hung up, I said mildly, “Good morning, Max. How’s your ulcer?”

  Max is tall and thin and tanned and crew-cut. I was seated, and he seemed to be looking down a long way at me. He said, “It’s in my stomach. Yours must be in your brain.”

  “Why, Max?”

  “I’ve just talked to Sam Gross. I didn’t know you two were related.”

  “Relax,” I said. “He’s brought us a lot of business, a lot of twenty-five percent business, Max. We can throw him a plum once in a while.”

  “All right, a plum. We give him some ten percent money and charge him only five percent commission. Isn’t that plum enough?”

  “Not for Miss Ritter,” I said.