The Walkaway

by Scott Phillips

  The sky to the east was getting to be a lighter blue now, the clouds in the distance orange and faint pink, and for an unsettling moment I had to think whether it was a sunrise or a sunset. My sense of day and night, of today and tomorrow and yesterday, was completely out of joint now, a disorienting but not altogether unpleasant sensation. It had been that way when I’d first arrived in Japan; the difference this time was that I was making no attempt to get synchronized with the locals. My conversation with the shop steward, Culligan—had that been last night, or was that tonight? Was it the next day already, since the sun was coming up, or had the new day started when I woke up at the hotel? What time was it in Japan, anyway?

  I parked in the Crosley’s small, weedy lot and we went inside. In the morning light the lobby looked like the nice hotel it had been once; it was only when you looked closely at the wallpaper or the carpet, or took a deep sniff, that it was clearly at the tail end of a steep decline. There was nobody at the front desk, but she had her key in her purse, and we climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. The hallway wasn’t as bad as the lobby. It was clean, and though the carpet was worn down the center, it was intact. A tall old woman came out of one of the other rooms wearing a bathrobe and slippers and glared at Beulah. When she was safely down the stairs Beulah looked over her shoulder and grinned. “Mrs. Grenwald. She lived here back when it was nice, and she doesn’t like anybody else who’s moved in since. Sometimes I like to introduce her to whatever fellow’s with me, just to get a rise out of her.”

  She opened the door and I was surprised to see a clean, comfortable-looking room with a nice view of downtown to the south. The light coming through the window cast long shadows, and she reached up and started unpinning her hair. When it came down, past her shoulders, the effect was startling. Framed that way, her face wasn’t half as bad as it looked in the bar. You wouldn’t call her pretty, but it did a lot to balance out that jaw.

  “Would you like me to strip, or do you want to undress me?” she asked. “I’m ready for anything. And I mean anything you can think of.”

  At that point all I wanted was a straightforward missionary-position screwing, and after a little of the old soixante-neuf to get us warmed up we went at it. It lasted longer than I had expected, given my recent bout of celibacy; every time I was on the verge of ejaculation I thought about my lost money back in Tokyo, which was distraction enough for a nice long roll. It was good to be fucking a big-bodied American girl after such a long time in Japan, and when I finally did finish I clung to her for a minute, my hands cupped on her shoulders from underneath, not moving, my body still tensed with the final inward stroke, relaxing slowly before I rolled off her and into a sitting position with my feet on the floor.

  By that time the sun was all the way up, the sky blue and cloudless, and the downtown traffic was getting heavy. She smiled as casually as if we’d been dancing and bummed a cigarette. Once it was lit she got up and limped into the bathroom, and instead of washing her off my raw, reddened dick in the sink in the middle of the pathetic kitchenette I went to the tiny closet and quietly opened it. In the bathroom I could hear the water running as I took a quick inventory. There was an ancient and badly painted dresser inside, like the one in Elishah’s closet, and quietly opening the drawers I found exactly one brassiere, three pairs of panties and one pair of stockings. Hanging from the bar was a single dress, orange, cut in the same style as the two I’d seen her wearing, a single blouse, white, and a skirt, black. There were no shoes. The dresser was three or four inches from the wall, and running my hand up the back of it I found taped to it a small glassine envelope containing a fine white powder. I wet my pinkie and tasted a minuscule amount, then closed it back up and replaced it. There wasn’t a track mark anywhere on her, I knew that much.

  I shut the closet door, lay back down on the bed and fired up a Lucky, staring at the ceiling and wondering for some odd reason what was happening back in Tokyo. For years I’d been waiting patiently for the end of the occupation, for that moment when all the rackets would be up in the air and up for grabs: girls, gambling, narcotics. I had no room to bitch; I’d done well during MacArthur’s time and even better afterward. A smart operator now, though, would be in a position to set himself up for life, and if I ever got my hands on the Frenchman who fucked me out of it, I was going to kill him and resurrect him, then kill him again.

  I’d only been able to take three thousand dollars American in cash with me when I left, and even that much was a risk; greenbacks were strictly forbidden, and if I’d been caught with it on my way out of Japan it would have been confiscated on the spot and I’d have been jugged. I had another twenty thousand bucks or so stashed away in various spots, but by now the Criminal Investigations Division had their hands on most or all of it. The rest was in scrip and worthless outside Japan, and by the time it was safe for me to go back it’d be worthless there, too.

  Apart from the money, though, the timing had been perfect; I’d just learned that I had business at home to take care of. I knew how to skirt channels, too, and by the time the intrepid Lieutenant McCowan got wind of the fact that I’d even applied for my furlough I was already out of Asia with a duffel bag full of legitimate-looking papers, some of them in his own name.

  I pulled my nail clippers out of my pocket and started cutting my fingernails, letting the clippings pop into the air and onto the floor. I was already done with my left hand by the time Beulah stepped out of the bathroom, still naked, and sat down on the bed next to me. “You gonna wash up? If you want to catch a little shut-eye you can. Maybe you’ll feel like some more afterward.”

  I knew I would, but right now I was bothered by her lying. I stood up and went into the bathroom and soaped up my joint. “So how long you lived here, Beulah?”

  “In town? I got here in forty-seven.”

  “Here at the Crosley.”

  “Since my husband got killed, in forty-nine.”

  “How’d he get killed?”

  “This guy I was seeing shot him.”

  “No shit.”

  “Jimmy’d pulled a knife on him. They said it was self-defense.”

  Rinsing myself off, I admired her ability to lie without registering anything on her gruesome pan at all; her husband was alive and dependent on her to feed his narcotic habit. I decided to crowd her a little. “You ever feel like something bigger than this? A little more space? Something for two, maybe?”

  “I hope you’re not suggesting a shackup after one quick fuck.”

  As I reentered the room I got another good look at that body of hers, soft here and firm there, and glad to do anything that came into my head.

  “I just thought of something else,” I said, feeling myself stiffen. She leaned back onto her elbows, arching her back.

  “Tell me about it,” she said softly.

  “Roll over,” I said, and she raised her ass compliantly into the air as she did so. Screwing her the second time, it struck me as funny that this ten-dollar whore thought she and her hillbilly consort Elishah were putting one over on the likes of Master Sergeant Wayne Ogden, and I started laughing so hard that she gave me a troubled look over her shoulder.

  “What’s funny, baby?” she asked.

  I didn’t break stride, just kept going at it and laughing. I could tell it was annoying the hell out of her, but after a while she started moaning and carrying on and pretending it was the greatest boning she’d ever had. Beulah was nothing if not a professional.

  11

  The parking lot at the Sweet Cage was three quarters full when Sidney got there, not bad for almost two o’clock in the afternoon on a weekday. Inside there was a bachelor party in progress around stage two, its participants in red or yellow power ties and suspenders, their jackets draped over their chairs, all of them doing those high-pitched rebel yells that seemed to be an essential part of the striptease business; at least it meant they’d probably been buying drinks.

  Stage one was doing lighter business; a few regul
ars and some yuppies who weren’t part of the bachelor party breathlessly watching the athletic, elaborately choreographed moves of Tyfannee, a small, wiry woman with a wild mane of bleached hair and no visible fat on her body. Her breasts stuck straight out from her chest like pink and brown antigravity devices, each one looking as supple and soft as a bag of Gold Medal flour. Her nose was half its original length and width, her lips so densely packed with collagen she actually had trouble speaking, and Sidney wondered, as he often did on seeing Tyfannee, what she must have looked like in her natural state. Midway between her carefully trimmed pubic hair and her navel—which, she had told him during her initial job interview, she’d had surgically converted from an outie to an innie—was a tattoo of a tigress, leaping at the viewer. “Springing out of the bush, get it?” Tattooing was another element of the business that had changed over the years; there had always been a higher incidence of tattoos among the dancers than in the general population of midwestern women, but when Sidney had started out they were mostly of the jailhouse variety, drawn with faded blue ink, simple in design and not too different from the tattoos men wore— skulls, dragsters, the signs of the zodiac, the occasional cross. Now they were multicolored and professional looking, another supposed improvement that left Sidney cold.

  Dennis was nowhere in sight so he stopped at the bar, where a single tall bartender, ponytailed and balding, was working frantically to keep up with the bachelor party’s considerable demands.

  “Where’s Dennis? Where are the lights?”

  The bartender shrugged. “How should I know? I’m totally fucking swamped back here. If you see him tell him I need help.”

  On his way to the office a woman he didn’t know in a bikini approached him carrying an empty drink tray and scowling.

  “You just get here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Heading for the can?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You have to order a drink first,” she snapped, sounding like she’d caught him at something. She had the ubiquitous fake tits and a hard expression to go with the body, and she stood blocking his path, feet planted firmly and palm held out like a traffic cop’s to stop him.

  He could have gently or even curtly explained to her that he was the owner, but he decided to press the conflict on. A customer in this situation might have left in a huff, and Sidney didn’t like customers walking out before they’d spent lots of money.

  “No I don’t.”

  “House policy. One drink minimum. What’ll you have?” She was still scowling at him. He hoped she was a great dancer, because she was the worst fucking cocktail waitress he’d seen in twenty years.

  “I won’t have anything.”

  “Then get your ass out of here before I call the manager.”

  “Better call him.”

  “Dennis,” she yelled, her tone rising sharply, along with the volume, on the heavily stressed second syllable.

  If he’s down to serving as his own bouncer, Sidney thought, we’ve got worse personnel problems than I thought. Dennis came out of the office looking harried, and before he had a chance to say anything the woman shrieked at him. “I just eighty-sixed this cocksucker and he won’t leave!” Her voice was shrill and loud enough to be heard over the Van Halen on the PA, and on the other side of the club the bachelor party took note, craning their necks to see who the troublemaker was and hoping to see a fight.

  “That’s Sidney, Bambee. He’s the owner,” he said in a wearier drone than usual. “Don’t antagonize him.”

  Bambee looked back at Sidney resentfully, trying to decide whether Dennis was fucking with her or not.

  “Give me one reason I shouldn’t fire her ass right here on the spot,” Sidney said.

  “Sidney, meet Bambee. Bambee, Sidney. Here’s two right off the bat. If she doesn’t finish her shift, we don’t have anybody to serve drinks.”

  “How about you?”

  “I don’t think I’d make much in the way of tips with this chest here.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “She’s a hell of a dancer with a very loyal following that we don’t want to lose to the Classy Lady.”

  “Get back to work, then,” Sidney said, and she turned away expressionlessly and marched to the bar.

  “What’d she do? Usually takes a lot to set you off with the girls.”

  “She needs to improve her people skills.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m reliably informed that her people skills are pretty extraordinary,” Dennis said. “Which probably accounts partially for that loyal following.”

  “Yeah, well, make sure she keeps a low fucking profile on that score or she’s out the door. That gets to be common knowledge and we’ve got big-ass troubles, and not just with the cops, either.” Three years before, Sidney had been obligated to let a couple of dancers go after an angry local entrepreneur called on him in person to inform him that the pair were turning tricks in the parking lot of the Tease-O-RAMA after hours. One of them went to work at the Classy Lady and the other joined the payroll of the entrepreneur who’d blown the whistle on her.

  “She knows that, Sidney. I’ve been drilling it into her head since the day she got here. Discretion.”

  “Well then you need to drill in something else about not pissing off the clientele.” He handed Dennis a dozen or so flyers. “Here, put these up, would you?”

  Dennis squinted at them. “Twelve grand? I may start looking for the old coot myself.”

  “Good luck,” Sidney said. He nodded at Bambee on the way out, a conciliatory gesture that she met with a scowl.

  The Arlington Home for the Aged was a low-slung brick building extending from either side of a central reception area. Behind the receptionist’s desk was a picture window through which an indoor commons could be seen, and waiting for the home’s director Ed watched the old folks through the glass; some were reading, some playing board games, and three couples danced to music from a record player. He was watching a pair of men, both about ninety, engaged in a tournament of arm wrestling. The smaller of the two had just won his second fall when the director opened the door to his office and invited Ed in.

  The office was cramped and unadorned except for the director’s medical diploma and the facility’s license to operate. The trash can was filled with used Styrofoam cups and one also sat on the director’s desk; he took a quick sip, grimaced and spit it back into the cup without embarrassment or apology.

  “I don’t know how much information you’re allowed to give out without a court order,” Ed said, watching the other man’s face carefully, “but I need to know the dates when a patient named Rory Blaine was here.”

  The director touched his black eyeglasses and smiled, not bothered at all by the implied legal threat. “Not a problem at all, Mr. Dieterle. Hold on just a minute . . .” He swiveled his chair to a filing cabinet and opened the top drawer. “Blaine, Blaine, Blaine . . . bingo, Blaine. Mr. Blaine moved out on the third of September of eighty-six.”

  “Right around when they opened Lake Vista.”

  The director looked over his glasses at Ed. “Exactly. He had been with us since February twelfth of nineteen eighty.”

  “His monthly fees were how much?”

  “All I’m at liberty to tell you is that they were less than Lake Vista’s.”

  “Taken care of by the Police Officer’s Pension Fund?”

  “Now we’re getting into the realm of what you’d need a court order for.”

  Ed stood up. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Mr. Blaine is doing well at the other facility?”

  “As well as you could expect,” Ed said, and he thanked him as he left. He noted that the arm wrestling continued in the commons, and had drawn a small crowd.

  It was already too late to take advantage of the Chimneysweep’s dollar Bloody Mary Special, which ran from eight to eleven A.M., so Eric ordered another margarita from the elderly, unfriendly bartender, who didn’t know him and didn’t ca
re whether this was the way he usually looked or not. Even in the forgiving light and casual ambience of the Chimneysweep it had been a toss-up when he walked in the door as to whether he’d be served or not, and only the intervention of the owner’s brother-in-law, sitting at the far end of the bar, gained him admittance and the right to order a drink.

  The brother-in-law’s name was Rex, and he was in every day to make sports book. “No offense, Gandy, but old Freddy’s got a point. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I got stuck without wallet or keys all the way across town and I had to walk back.”

  “In this heat? Jesus Christ. You coulda gotten heat stroke, you know that? Especially drunk. You get all dehydrated like that and next thing you know—” He slapped his hand down hard onto the bar and lolled his head over to the side, eyes bulging out and tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

  “I’m not all that drunk.”

  “You sure smell like you are. So how’s business? I hear that Trade Mart of yours is gonna be the next big thing.”

  “Yeah. Still working on the financing.” He signaled for another margarita.

  “You know who you ought to talk to is old Danny Orville, over at South Kansas Federal.”

  “Met with him last week, they’re crunching the numbers. Waiting to hear.” Freddy sat the second drink in front of him, and with a single swig he drained half of it.

  The phone rang and the bartender picked up, then signaled to Rex, who picked up a Princess phone next to his elbow.

  “Uh-huh. Gotcha.” He hung up, pulled out a small notebook and wrote something down. “You want some action while I got this out?”

  “You take dog bets?”

  Rex stared contemplatively into the distance. “Hm. Greyhound racing. Is that some kind of sport with an unpredictable outcome?”

  Eric knew he was being mocked, but he didn’t want to alienate Rex. He nodded. “Sure.”

  “Then I guess I take dog bets.”

  He had fourteen dollars left. He was almost ready to go; between the heat and the long walk, the daytime drunk wasn’t as much fun as he’d thought it might be. He was also still disoriented from the sight of Loretta and her lover, and he knew he was just a few drinks short of getting melancholy. One more margarita would leave him eleven to bet. He reached over Rex for the sports page of the morning paper and looked at the racing page. Not much in the way of handicapping information, but he knew a lot of the dogs, and sometimes just the trainer’s name was enough for him to go on.