Blonde Bait

by Ed Lacy

  She threw herself at me, giving me a strong hug. I held her tightly, not sure I believed all this. Sleeping with Rose had always been great—for me. But even if this was some kind of sales talk it didn't matter: I was happy to have Rose on any terms. I'd have been glad merely to have her picture on the wall. It was that way with me.

  She whispered, “Oh, Mickey, Mickey, I do love you! I'll love you always and only you. Darling, I—I want to do something for you. Take all the money, hold it for us. It's yours, every dollar!”

  “I like the set-up the way it is,” I said cautiously. She'd never offered me the dough before.

  “Don't you get it, Mickey, I want to do something... important for you. Anything you want. Do you want a child? I'll make a baby for you.”

  “No, I don't want a kid.” I kissed her cheek.

  “You must let me do something for you! Let me be as good to you as you've been to me.”

  “Okay, Rose, there is... one thing.” My fingers played with her ear.

  “Honey!” She went over my face with hot little kisses.

  “Rose, tell me what you're running from.”

  It was a sickening thing—to feel her body turning stiff and cold, the way she recoiled from me as if I'd become a snake—and I was sorry I'd popped the question. From the other end of the bed she asked harshly, “Goddamn you, why did you have to spoil it?”

  “I'm not spoiling anything. You're the one who wants to make our dream world a real one. Look, Rose, I'm willing to let things be as before but if you want to make it real... it has to be down the line. You have to trust me all the way. I have to know what you did.”

  “What I did? You miserable bastard, what makes you think I did anything? I didn't do a damn thing!”

  She started to jump out of bed. I yanked her back. For a moment we wrestled but that was my racket and she didn't have a chance. Pinning her to the bed, one leg across her belly, I told her, “It's not mere curiosity on my part to know the full score—it will help me protect you. You're a stand-out chick. Everyone in these islands will remember you. For all I know, we ought to clear out of the islands. In Port-au-Prince I ran upon an old buddy. That can happen again. I have to know how much to tell him, or whether I should have ducked him. There's also...”

  “What did you tell him?” She was breathing hard into my face, fear back in her voice.

  “A pack of lies. You don't have to worry about Hal, he...”

  “How the hell do you know what I have to worry about!”

  “That's it, exactly. I want to know—for your own good.”

  “Damn it, why did you have to tell him anything?”

  “Because I couldn't duck him and he saw me on the Sea Princess. Boats like ours don't come in crackerjack boxes—I slipped him a crook of bull about being a yacht captain for some rich cluck. Don't you see, if I'm going to lie—and I don't mind doing it, or anything else for us—I at least have to know what I'm lying around. There's this other thing: I like it okay here on Ansel's island. You do too—at times. But if I knew the score... well, there might be other places for us. Maybe, well... might even live it up in a big city for a few weeks or...”

  “No!”

  “Why must you alone decide this for us? If the cops get you they'll throw the book at me, too!”

  “I haven't done anything wrong.”

  “Then why the big fear, being on the run? Rose, wanting you as I do, I wouldn't do anything to... to spoil what we have. But I have to know.” Kissing her, I rolled to the center of the bed.

  She stood up and walked around the room. Then she stood at the side of the bed, a calendar girl staring down at me with hard eyes. She was shaking a little.

  There was a long silence. Closing my eyes I said in a matter-of-fact voice, “I bought everything on the list. Soon as I rest we'll unload the boat. The new records you wanted, the newspapers and magazines. I spent $419.67. The change is in my wallet. I even have some ice cream for you...”

  She reached down and slapped my face. I caught her hand. She said, “Stop talking like you're a hired hand.”

  I pulled her down on top of me. “Isn't that all you trust me to do?”

  The tears came again and she was all over me, soft and warm and big, kissing and hugging me, moaning my name. “Mickey, it terrifies me to even talk about it.”

  “Honey, there's only you and me here—no dream-busters. We talk and see what it adds up to. I have to know—if you want it the way you said.”

  For a few seconds she seemed limp, almost lifeless. I felt her take a deep breath and then she sat up as she said, “Okay, I guess I knew I'd have to tell you some time. As you said, I have to trust you all the way. Get me a cigarette, please, and I'll tell you... all of it.”

  V

  “I was down on my luck in Philly. Way down and a couple hundred bucks in debt. Finally I landed a strip in a two-bit night club. Some club. It was really a crummy bar with a few tables and a junkie piano player who'd been lost in orbit before they invented satellites. It was the kind of dump where I had to use the owner's office for my dressing room. At the end of the first week he paid me off with a rubber check so we worked out a deal where I would strip only on weekends and work as a barmaid the rest of the time—with a cash pay-off every night. Along with the tips I was doing kind of fair, averaging about a hundred a week. I planned on holding down the bar for a few months, until I got straight with my debts. It was a break for the owner; business picked up. Most of the customers had seen me strip and told their friends. Somehow they got a bang having me serve them drinks. You know how it was, the joint full of whispered snickers and X-ray eyes all the time.

  “Well, the owner had me wearing a low-cut dress, one of those bare shoulder deals that made the lads jump when I bent over to put their drinks down. Only the bar was in line with the door and about ten days later I caught a cold, soon I was in bed with a fever. Then I heard the owner had lost his cabaret license because entertainers aren't supposed to work in the joint, too. So I was back to being out of work again, only this time I was sick enough to die and stuck in a flea-bag hotel. Josef came up to see me, the only person who gave a damn. He took care of me, sent up a doc, and...”

  “Who's Joseph?”

  “Josef, not Joseph. Josef Fedor. He was a guy about forty-five or fifty who...”

  “Was?”

  Rose gave me an annoyed look. “Yes—was. He was a stocky, kind of squat man, a quiet fellow with a large head and weird bushy grey hair that stood straight up. One of his eyes looked odd—later I learned it had been shot out and he was wearing a glass one. He was a foreigner who spoke with a thick accent and hung around the bar every night, sipping wine, watching the other regulars as though it was all a show. He chain-smoked cigarettes in a little gold holder. He wore a European suit and overcoat, with belts in the back, and heavy shoes. Never did more than nod at me, or slip me a buck tip at the end of the night, that's why I was surprised when he came to see me. But then, he was full of surprises. One night he sat at the piano and played like he was on the concert stage. When one of the bar-lushes yelled for jazz, he played a real hot piano, too. Yet no matter how often he was coaxed he'd never play again—at the bar.

  “He was a mixture of charm, manners, and toughness. Like one night in the bar a clown made cracks about foreigners getting all the jobs here. You know how any sort of stuff can build up in a gin mill. It started as a joke but the clown began getting nasty and then Josef knocked him flat with a terrible punch. Okay, most guys would have left it at that. But Josef gets this funny look in his good eye. He picked a beer bottle off the bar, broke it, and damn near stabbed the unconscious guy in the guts. The bouncer got to Josef first. The bouncer was an ex-pug, bigger than you, and at least a foot taller than Josef. He clipped Josef on the chin and Josef used Judo or something, threw him clear across the room. Then he stood in the center of the joint, muttering something nobody could understand—the broken bottle still in his right hand as if challenging the whole crowd.
A cop came in with his gun out. Cool as ice, Josef walked over and shoved the broken bottle over the barrel of the cop's pistol. Then he stood there, waiting, this crazy smile on his big face. When the cop yelled for him to get his hands up, Josef took his time, even gave the cop a mock bow, and let the policeman frisk him. He was packing a gun on his hip, too, a very small automatic. More cops came and they took him away, but within the hour Josef was back at his usual place at the bar, drinking his wine as if nothing had happened. He was one tough little son of a...”

  “This Josef your husband?”

  “Aha. I told you he had this kind of charm about him, like bothering to see me when he heard I was sick. And he was generous, took care of my bills. When I was well, I moved into his room—in another cheap hotel. A week later he woke up one afternoon, said he was headed for Chicago, did I want to go? It always took me a while to understand his broken English, but I said yes damn fast. I hardly had any choice. Then he gave me a speech with a smile, a line about conventions and moral hypocrisy in America, and ended with saying if I wanted to marry him, he would do it. I told you, he was a surprise bag. I couldn't see what I had to lose and we were married. Although I always had the feeling nothing mattered a heavy damn to him, and he probably had wives all over the world.

  “We found a small furnished apartment in Chicago and I saw another side of Josef, he was a master with wood. He made a complete dinette set for us, as good as anything in a store. Or while he'd be listening to the radio—we never had a TV set—he'd start whittling on some old hunk of wood and soon have a chain, or perhaps a figure of a...”

  “What did he do for pork chops?” I cut in.

  Rose shrugged. “He didn't work. He'd sit around all day and read these foreign papers, and my Lord, he could speak enough languages, but not English. He used to have a lot of dizzy pet names for me. 'Mila,' and 'liebling.' I never knew what they meant. Josef wasn't a big spender but seemed to have ready money. I never saw him go to a bank or receive any mail; he carried his green in a money belt. I don't know where he got it.”

  “Didn't you ever ask?”

  “Yes, One day, after we were married, I did ask. In his busted English he told me, 'Grosser blondine, I have done too much work in life already. I am retired from this crazy world.' Of course I asked what he used to do, what he had retired from? He knocked me down with an open hand slap. I flip when a man roughs me up. I went at him with a pair of scissors that happened to be on the table. The next thing I knew he'd dropped me hard on the floor and was holding the scissors. He was kneeling beside me, smiling kind of odd—like that time in the bar; he put the scissors near my throat. I was too scared to say a word. He said, 'You are brave, liebling, not a cry. I am an expert at slicing. Never make me angry again. I am not a beast unless I am pressed. As we all are.' I never asked again and that was the last and only time he hit me; I got that message to him. The weird part is, he was talking pretty good English then.”

  Rose stood to light a new cigarette. I watched her move in the faint light. “Why did you stay with him?”

  “I knew exactly what I was to Josef, merely a gal to have around. But what would I leave him for? For men to make big-eyes at my body in some filthy night club? Was that any different? And if Josef acted loony at times, living with him was easier than scratching for a job. He was a good thing.” She turned toward me. “Does it shock you to hear me say that?”

  “No.” I wondered if, in a sense, she was merely something very beautiful to have around for me too. But how many jokers ever have anything beautiful around?

  “Yes it does, Mickey, I see it on your face. I'm glad, I want it to shock you because that life is over for me. I have plenty of good years left for you.”

  “Okay, it does shock me,” I said, because she wanted to hear it. “Now tell me about Josef.”

  Rose sat on the foot of the bed, her figure in silhouette against the light of the doorway, slowly smoking the cigarette. “There isn't much to tell, I never was able to know him. He carried a gun at times, yet he wasn't any racketeer or punk. He was tough and had been through a lot... had scars all over his body of nasty looking wounds. On one shoulder there was a tattoo of a tiny blue and yellow bird. It was pretty. He told me it had been done in Indochina. Josef had an odd build. His legs and hips were nothing but he had a powerful chest and shoulders, arms bigger than yours. We slept in twin beds because he'd often get nightmares. In a whisper he would scream and curse, moan, punch the air, and wake up in a sweat. When he awoke he might start laughing, check the door lock, and maybe take a pill. I used to listen but most of what he said was in some foreign language. One name he'd repeat often was 'Sour the German.' Willie Sour. It was the only time he ever used a first name and I remember it because I kept thinking of sauerkraut. And there was a girl's name, probably some Oriental chippy. He used to say her name with a sigh, so she must have been a hot number. He'd say, 'Me-Lucy-Ah.' But I never asked him about these people. I didn't want to know.”

  Rose crushed the cigarette in the chair ashtray, stretched out on the bed next to me. For a few minutes she didn't speak and I thought she had dozed off. Then she said, “I want to be fair. Josef didn't give me a hard time. Mostly he left me alone. I'd cook for him and sleep with him, and that was it. The rest of the time he'd be reading his papers, often chuckling. He might talk aloud, but rarely in English. Once he roared with laughter at something in the papers and said, 'So they got Listro, that swine. The Devil will have a tough soul to roast now.' But as I said, mostly he'd read or fool around with his hunks of wood. In the evening if I wanted to go to a movie, he'd take me, but he was always laughing at the wrong places. Sometimes he took me to concerts, longhaired junk. If I wanted money, or seemed bored, he would pull out ten or twenty bucks—more if I asked— and say, 'Grosser blondine, you are restless. Buy yourself something.'

  “Often we would bar-hop, but he never drank anything but wine. I never saw him loaded. Josef didn't have any friends—neither did I—but in bars he would talk to strangers. He liked to argue about music. Once he met a guy who'd been an army officer and they talked all night in French, I guess, about wars, making diagrams on the napkins. When he was in the mood, he was a great cook. Especially in the summer. How he loved the sun! All summer we'd stay on a beach, even camp out for a night there. He couldn't swim and didn't care for fishing, but he loved the sun. Didn't seem to have nightmares in the summer either. That's when he cooked, knocking out fancy pastries like a chef.

  “The January before I—saw you—we moved to New York. For no reason I knew of. I suppose he liked to be on the go and always in a big city where he could buy all those foreign papers. We rented a furnished apartment— Josef never spent money for clothes or decent rooms. In New York he started muttering to himself a great deal. Once he looked up from a paper and mumbled, 'Ah, mila, the world is very sick. There is no peace. Sakiet makes me sad.' I said, 'Just tell this Sac-it-guy to leave you alone.' Josef gave me a sad look and told me I was sick, too. About this time he started writing every night, studying maps in a cheap atlas he bought. He told me he was writing letters. I thought maybe to his Oriental chippy. He'd scratch away all night, often staring at the wall for a long time, then writing like mad. He didn't give a damn if I was around or not. One afternoon, I ran into a small-time booking agent I knew. He had a singing job for me in a mid-town bar. I took it for something to do.

  “Josef didn't mind. He'd usually come around at about two in the morning, to sip his wine, and take me home when I'd finished. This was strictly a small time joint, no names out front or anything. I didn't have a police work permit for New York, but the owner didn't care. Only me and a kid who played a good organ. Josef even gave me money to buy a couple of dresses, never asked for a dime of what I made. This went on for a few months. He was writing all the time, or going to the library.

  “I guess it was in May—I know it was getting warm— when I came home from shopping one afternoon and there was this little man with a completely ba
ld head and an evil face—part of his nose had been eaten away at one time—having tea with Josef. I gathered this was Willie Sour. I also knew Josef was upset that I'd returned so soon. Sauerkraut looked like the original creep and he gave me the once-over, made some laughing crack. I didn't have to understand the language to know what he was saying. He left a few minutes later. Josef seemed on edge. He was packing his gun again and strapped an ugly knife up his sleeve. I didn't ask what it was about but he told me, 'Liebling, soon I have much money. We travel far. There is nothing to worry over.'

  “When I finished my midnight number I found him waiting in my dressing room—which was a part of the greasy kitchen screened off from the wino cook. Josef seemed gay but when he put his arms around me I felt the sleeve knife. He stayed in the kitchen while I went on, yakking with the cook in Italian, or something. When he took me home that night in a cab—usually he liked to walk—he asked what I was doing the next day. I told him I was going to have my hair done.” Rose paused. “I'm going into details because this is the important part.”