by Peter Rabe
It didn’t take her long to get back, this time with the same kind of thing, only in a different color. She stood, turned before him, and flounced the skirt Again she was gone before he could give any opinion of it. He had caught on by this time, and when she came back he was ready. He got to his feet and said, “Honey, that’s the one. That one is a real knockout and just exactly what we want!”
Her eyes lit up with an unnatural sparkle, and judging by her face the whole world was a dream, a big beautiful dream. “I knew this was it,” she said. “I knew it! And now we’ll see if it works.” She grabbed the front of the dress and ripped.
It ripped good.
The whole thing came apart in the front and Pat stood in the middle of the oval, laughing.
Benny turned her around by the shoulders and pushed her toward the dressing room. The stunned saleslady revived herself in time to open the door for them, but when they had Pat inside the trouble had only started. Outside the dressing room the saleslady turned, a withering look on her face, but Benny couldn’t hear what she was saying to him because Pat had started to pound on the door. He didn’t have to hear the words; he could tell by the woman’s face, which was getting more and more livid, that things were getting out of hand fast Suddenly the pounding stopped and at the same time the saleslady turned on her heel and hurried down the aisle. At least one of the mad women was out of his hair. When he tried the door to the dressing room he found it was locked. “Pat? Open up, Pat, it’s me.” No answer. “Honey, will you open up, for chrissakes?”
The door opened. She was wearing nothing but bra and panties and there was no mistaking the look she gave him. With a strange smile on her face she reached out and pulled at his lapel. That’s when they heard the feet pounding down the aisle. Pat stepped out of the cubicle and started to jump up and down. “Run, run, run!” she yelled. “Run, run, run!”
It hadn’t taken them very long. One of the cops said, “You’re under arrest,” and the other one grabbed Benny by the arm.
They should have grabbed Pat instead. She crouched like a sprinter and was off among the clothes racks, one of the cops after her.
“Was I exaggerating, Officer?” The saleslady gave the cop who was holding Benny a haughty look. “Was I exaggerating?”
“Whatever she told you, she’s wrong.” Benny started to talk fast “She’s sick, Officer. My wife’s sick. A malaria attack. They come sudden and bad, real bad. She goes out of her head, for a while that is, just for a while.”
“You ain’t kidding.” The cop kept holding onto Benny’s arm.
“Don’t you get it, copper? She’s got to have a doctor and fast. She’s got to be in bed, rest up, and then everything will be O.K. I know how it goes, I’ve had experience, don’t you hear?”
“I saw it” The cop kept his grip on Benny’s arm.
“Look, lady, we got to do something. Wrap me up two of those dresses, like she was wearing. I want to be ready to go when they get back. Wrap up two and have another one ready for her to wear.”
“You realize she tore one of them. You-”
“I’ll pay for it Now get a move on. And wrap up some underthings, too. We got to be ready when-”
“Underthings, sir?”
“Like she’s wearing. Now move!”
The saleslady blushed, but she didn’t say anything.
When she had left, the cop let go of Benny’s arm. “Might as well sit down. Real problem you got there, ain’tcha?”
They sat down on a frilly-looking love seat and Benny pulled out a smoke. “You said it, Officer. This doesn’t happen often, but seeing how you’ve been co-operating-”
“Real problem, I’d say.” The cop rubbed his hand over the gray stubbles on his chin. His eyes looked sleepy. “I can feel for you, bud. We got one mean judge in this town.”
“Look, Officer, you’ve been co-operating swell-”
“Shame, you know, bud? Real shame to have a little thing like this get blown up all over creation.”
“You said it, Officer. You hit it right on the head.” Benny started to pull some bills out of his pocket. “You’ve been a real square guy about this thing.” Benny pushed a folded wad into the man’s pants pocket.
The cop had been looking the other way, but now he took the bills out of his pocket and counted them. Then he put them back. “Like I was telling you, bud, you never seen such a mean judge like we got in this town.” He yawned, making three fat bulges out of the skin under his jaw. “And what’s worse, bud, the only co-operation that shyster ever gives is to the press. Got a regular pipeline to the press.”
Benny had started to sweat. He rubbed his hands together, trying to kill the itch in his palms, and there was a hard line down one side of his mouth.
“So I guess we might as well get ready,” said the cop. “Might as well make a call to the station and get everything ready.” But he didn’t move. He kept sitting there on the love seat.
Benny went through his act again, and then the cop went through his. When his hand was out of the pocket he got up and looked at Benny. “You know, bud, we’ll just forget this happened. No reason why you shouldn’t get a break once in a while.” He looked around, yawning. “Now, where’s that Paul gone to? Shoulda been back, don’t you figure, bud?”
He should have been. He should have found Pat quite a while ago, and he should have been back. If he hadn’t found her yet, the store would have been in an uproar by now, with a half-naked maniac chasing down the aisles and an armed cop clomping after her. Benny took a drag on his butt and burned his mouth. He dropped the stub and ground it into the carpet with a sharp twist of his foot.
Then he saw them. Pat was wearing an overcoat that had a price tag dangling from a button in front and she was walking with demure little steps, eyes cast down. The young cop behind her looked as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He pulled at his tie, yanked his cartridge belt around, and once he stumbled. When Pat walked past him she winked. Then she closed the door of the dressing room behind her, and the two cops wandered off.
When Pat came out of the dressing room, she looked sweet and cool in a new dress. She came and stood by Benny, waiting patiently while he paid the bill. Then they left.
When Benny pulled the car into the traffic, he saw the two cops standing on the sidewalk, looking after them.
After half an hour Malcotte showed behind a bend. At the motor court Benny turned down the gravel lane and pulled up to the cottage. Brakes squealed behind and the two cops were there again. But Benny ignored them. He tried to keep his mind on Pat, who sat pushed back in the seat, her eyes dull, her hands curled in her lap.
“Pat,” he said, “end of the line. Get up, Pat.”
She yawned. He walked to her side of the car, pulled the door open, and almost made her tumble off the seat.
“Pull yourself together, for chrissakes.”
She yawned and got out of the car. He led her into the cabin, turned the bedcovers down, and pulled the new dress over her head. Pat flopped down on her back. She seemed to fall suddenly into a deep sleep and looked as though she’d be out for hours.
Benny went back out to the convertible, picked up the packages, and took them into the cottage. Pat was lying on her back, still sleeping hard. She hadn’t got the dose right. She’d forgotten again about the purity of Tober’s junk. He looked at his watch, at Pat, and then he went out and got into the car and took off.
Benny made the half-hour trip in fifteen minutes, and as he slowed for traffic the thick air started to cling to him like hot glue. The telephone exchange was cool and each booth had a little fan. Benny squeezed into a booth and waited.
“I am ready with your call to New York,” said the mechanical voice. There was a buzz at the other end, then a woman’s voice that said that Mitzi was molting again, then the buzz. “I am ready with your call to New York,” the voice said again.
“Hello, hello! This is Tapkow… Yeah, I know. I got a new address. Haute Platte, Louisiana
… No, that’s good enough, because I’ll be calling you… So has Alverato… Whaddaya mean, more than a week! How’s that meathead think I’m going to keep the lid on this thing with no co-operation and Pendleton wise to the whole setup? Listen, for God’s sake, tell him I got to know how much longer. This thing is worth millions and he- Of course I’m running out of money… That’s damn generous of him, but another thousand bucks can’t hide me from Pendleton. That creep might be tapping this call right this minute!”
They talked a while longer but Benny didn’t get anywhere. He should lie low a while longer, just a few days maybe, he should keep in touch, and he could pick up a grand at Western Union in the morning.
He was sweating hard when he came out of the booth and it wasn’t the heat that did it to him. It was all too vague, all too dependent on one fat slob rolling around on his yacht in the Caribbean and making passes at Miss Driscoll. “This’ll make Pendleton stew,” Alverato had said. It was doing worse than that to Benny. Too much had gone wrong, at Tober’s, then the cops now, and that queer and crazy thing with Pat. He’d been wrong about too many things.
Before he left for Malcotte he spent a few bucks on some green whisky and three hundred for an air conditioner. Then he drove back, feeling jumpy and tense. He’d been wrong about too many things.
He didn’t know it, but he’d been right about one thing. Pendleton had been tapping that call.
Chapter Eighteen
The air conditioner helped. They sat in the cabin and there was the liquor. He figured the liquor was better than the other stuff and it helped with Pat, it helped so he could handle things. Sometimes when he saw her asleep and how her face was drawn and the bones showing more, he killed the vague feeling that came to him then. That helped too. Later, later for sure, he’d promised himself to do right Later, when the pressure was off and the deal secure… He couldn’t be any good to her until then. Except for the liquor. When he gave her the liquor, that was less bad than the other.
What worried him was New York. There had been no money at Western Union. And nobody answered the phone.
He went twice a day. He sat in the back of the telephone exchange watching the young operator plucking at her switches.
“Nothing yet, sir. It just rings.” She looked over to Benny and gave him an encouraging smile.
“Keep trying.”
One red light kept blinking monotonously. Benny waited. Was that kid giving him the eye? He saw her glance at him, look away, and then do it again. Benny got up and leaned his elbows on the counter. “Nothing yet?” he asked.
She looked up and smiled. “I’m afraid not, sir.”
She didn’t have to be so damn cheerful about it.
A customer stepped up to get some change and she counted it out.
“You’ve been in here pretty regular, haven’t you?” She looked at Benny again. She had dimples whether she smiled or not, and Benny was watching them.
“Yes. Off and on.”
She giggled and looked away. He started to say something else, to take her up on the way she was acting, but then he checked it. He watched the operator’s speaker, the way it moved up and clown with her breathing, and then he looked at her arm. It was pink and plump, with two fat wrinkles where she bent it at the elbow. He pushed himself away from the counter.
“Cancel that call. There’s nobody home.” He went to the door.
“Sir?”
He turned to see her smiling again, dimpling. He frowned, reached for the door. It had a pneumatic check on it that didn’t work right and he had to yank.
“Sir?” she called again.
This time he came back.
“What is it?” He sounded in a hurry.
“I was wondering-” and she stopped, trying to make up her mind about something. “I was wondering if I should tell you this or perhaps you aren’t even the one. It’s against regulations, really, but he sounded so-uh-so strange about it, I was wondering if I shouldn’t ask you. I haven’t told anybody because it might be against regulations or it might be nothing at all, so you got to promise you won’t tell anybody I said this, will you?”
“Look, kid, if you’ve got something to say, say it.”
“Well, here’s what happened. I was on till twelve the other night, so about a quarter to twelve or so this New York call came in, asking for anybody at the pay-phone exchange, so I took it because naturally me being the only pay-phone exchange at this-”
Benny groaned. “Get on, willya? What was it?”
“So he said, ‘Quick, lady, take this down because I can’t talk much,’ and while I was trying to get it down fast he kept right on talking and then we were cut off.”
“Well, what did he say? Who was it?”
“We got cut off, or he hung up. I think he hung up.”
Benny wiped his face. “Jessis in heaven,” he said, and looked up at the ceiling.
“Do you think it was for you?” She gave him an innocent look.
“How do I know?” Then he lowered his voice, talking patiently. “Go right ahead, kid, just talk.”
“He didn’t have a chance to really explain, but I thought it might be for you because he said he was the man who’d been getting the calls from here, the calls from somebody called Tallow. Is your name Tallow?”
“Yeah, yeah, Tallow, lard, pig fat, go on, go on!”
“When you came back in I should tell you, he said, because he might not get to the phone any more. He said something like the wise father or something, and then it happened. We got cut off, I mean.”
Benny closed his eyes and let his mouth go lax as if he were asleep. “He said what?” His eyes stayed closed while he waited for an answer.
“He said something about the wise father.”
“Father? Whose father?”
“Oh, her father, he said. I remember now.”
“Fine now let’s try again. Her wise father?”
“Yes, something like that. And he didn’t say father, really, he said old man. That’s what he said.” She looked pleased.
Benny was silent for a moment, staring at the girl without seeing her. “Did he say perhaps that her old man-”
“Of course! He said her old man is wise.”
Benny repeated it, giving the last word a different tone.
“Her old man is wise.”
Pendleton.
Benny rushed out of the exchange. He tore the door open with such force that it flew against the wall in spite of the pneumatic door lever. Benny made one stop. He checked at Western Union, but there wasn’t a thing waiting for him. The clerk double-checked, shook his head at Benny, and turned to the next customer. But the next customer said no, he had changed his mind. Tearing his message blank in two, he followed Benny out of the door.
When Benny was chasing down the small highway that led to Malcotte, he figured he had never before been so anxious to see Pat. Perhaps she wasn’t there any more and instead there was a trigger-happy goon sitting on the bed, shotgun across his knees, waiting for the door to open and the fire to open and the gut to spill all over the floor where the shotgun-But that wouldn’t be like Pendleton. Not at all. Perhaps a knife, or a rope, or even just an empty room with a guy sitting on the other side eating a meal, a good one, and Benny starving to death right there, tied to the radiator. That was more like Pendleton. But right then it didn’t mean much to Benny. He had his foot to the floor board and was chasing the short trembling shadow that flitted like a black sheet over the road just ahead of the car.
There wasn’t a soul in the motor court. The early-afternoon sun came down like a hammer, and when Benny killed the motor next to the cabin he could hear the air conditioner hum. Hand in one pocket, he crunched across the gravel, stopped. Just the air conditioner humming in the cabin and the white heat coming down like a hammer. Then he pushed the door open, fast. She didn’t even jump.
“That you, Benny?” Pat looked over her shoulder and said, “Hi.” She stood in front of the cool blast of the w
indow unit, legs wide, arms over head, naked. A back like silk; no, like nylon, he thought. And her belly would be flat, curved in, even, her breasts sharp and impudent. He jumped at a noise.
“You alone?”
“Why, baby!” She came over.
“Didn’t you hear-”
“The shower curtain.” She put her slim arms over his shoulders and smiled. “Glad to see you,” and she gave him a small kiss on the mouth. “You glad to see me? Huh?” She stepped back.
“Yes.”
“Well? Look! You’re not even looking at me. Never mind.” She came back to him, pressing herself close. Her head was in the curve of his shoulder, rubbing against his neck like a cat’s. “Hi!” Her voice was husky. “Hi, baby.”
He coiled his arms around her back, a wild strong embrace, which he checked before it got done. He must be losing his grip.
“Baby?” she said. “Why, baby…”
He pushed her away. Time was running out. “Listen, Pat-Look, let’s have a drink, huh?” He sounded tense, staccato.
“You want one, baby?”
Time was running out.
“Sure, and you. You want one.” He went to the bathroom, where they kept the glasses and the bottle by the sink. “Stay there,” he called through the door. “Stay there while I’m fixing it.”
He fixed it, because time was running out. He fixed it strong and heavy to make sure she’d pass out, pass out not to be in the way, not to object, not to get hurt, perhaps.
“Here. Mud in your eye.”
She took the glass and winked at him over the rim. “To us?” she said.
He watched her almost with a stare, watched her sniff the glass, tilt it, and the liquid disappearing, slipping away slow and even.
“How was it?”
“Bitter.”
He turned away. Pat was lying on the bed, the thin sheet spread over her body.
“Sit here?” she asked.
“Sure. Sure, kid.” He started to pace, putting the bottle down, picking it up, not knowing what to do to push time.
