The Walkaway

by Scott Phillips

  “You followed him?”

  “I sure did. He hasn’t made any effort to contact Sally?”

  I shook my head, trying to figure it out. “Not as far as I know.”

  The waitress came over right then, and all of a sudden I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat. I ordered ham and sausage anyway, and pancakes. Ed got scrambled eggs and toast and reminded her to bring a ketchup bottle.

  “Wonder how much Culligan spilled.”

  “Probably all of it. I need you to tell Sally about this. You think she’ll call this weekend off?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I could threaten a raid,” he said. “You think she’d cancel then?”

  “Not a chance.” She’d see right through the bluff, and Ed knew it just like I did.

  The food came and we ate without saying much more. He’d done this on his own time, and if he’d left it up to me who knows what would have happened. I wanted to thank him for it but I couldn’t, so I picked up the check when we left and he didn’t stop me.

  Sally was at work, and what I had to tell her could wait until her shift ended at three. I didn’t want to monkey around at the front gate at Collins, since I didn’t have an employee identification tag or an appointment to see anyone. I could have flashed my badge and said it was police business, but lots of the guards are retired cops. If I chanced on one of them he’d know it wasn’t a plainclothes officer’s shield and I’d have a lot more questions to answer.

  So I got into my broken down old Ford and headed to the hospital. The chassis rattled every time I hit thirty-five miles per hour, and there was a shimmy every time I braked over forty. I’d been gypped, but I hated to admit it so I didn’t gripe. I wished I’d taken better care of the Hudson, but Mildred would have gotten it in the divorce anyway.

  One of the doctors on duty in the Emergency Ward had been there and remembered him from the other morning. He talked to me in an examination room while he treated a little boy who’d bent his thumbnail backward playing football in the house. The thumb was all swollen and full of pus, and the doctor was heating up a bent paper clip, and the boy and his mother were watching the end of it get red.

  “Charming fellow. Said he’d been jumped after he left some dive out in the county, two or three guys he’d never seen before. He took it pretty philosophically.”

  “How bad was he beat up?”

  “I’ve seen lots worse,” the doctor said, “but he was knocked around pretty well. No broken bones. One eye swelled shut.” By now the hot paper clip was glowing orange on its end, and without any warning the doctor held the boy’s hand down and burned a neat little round hole in his thumbnail. The boy hollered, but it was already over, and he just watched and sniffled a little while the doctor squeezed the pus out the little hole like toothpaste coming out of a tube. I thanked the doctor and left.

  As long as I was at the hospital I had something else I wanted to do. I went upstairs to the obstetrical ward, where the admitting nurse squinted at me, puzzled at seeing me out of uniform.

  “Your wife didn’t have a baby, did she, Gunther?”

  “Haven’t had a wife for a couple of years now. If I’m lucky I won’t have one again ever.” I meant it to be a joke, but I guess I looked so serious it came out mean. “I’m just funning, Constance. Mrs. McCallum on duty today?”

  “Oh. She is, just let me check.”

  She paged her like nothing was odd, but she was dying to know why I wanted to talk to Mrs. McCallum. I was too jumpy to make small talk, and if she wanted to know what the story was she could ask just about anybody else on the ward.

  After a minute Dot popped her head around a corner. “Five minutes,” she said. “I rescheduled my break.” Then she disappeared. I wandered down to the nursery and watched the families waving through the glass at the nurses holding the babies up. I was still there when she crept up beside me in her white uniform, all business and no fun, the way she always was now when we were face-to-face. Behind the stern look, though, I thought she was happy to see me. Not that it would ever do me any good.

  “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I was here for something else. Hadn’t talked to you in a while, thought I’d come up and see if you had a minute. You want a cup of coffee?”

  She looked at me funny, like I must be up to something with this coffee business. “Come on,” I said. “It’s your coffee break.”

  I could tell she wanted to smile, even if it wasn’t there on her face. “Let’s keep it brief. I don’t want to start any tongues wagging around here.”

  Tongues around that place hadn’t stopped wagging on the two of us since 1942, but I kept my mouth shut. Since the hospital cafeteria was usually full of nurses and cops we wandered across the big green hospital lawn and jaywalked over to Rudolf’s coffeehouse. We took a booth and ordered coffee, with a danish for her. Her starched white uniform made her seem even smaller than she was, and her hair was pulled up so tight under her cap that from the front you couldn’t really tell she was a redhead. Sitting across the booth from her it was impossible to imagine her laughing, or driving out to the lake on a weekend. She was still pretty but doing everything she could to make it not matter.

  “So how’s he doing?”

  “He’s fine. Having a big summer at day camp.”

  “That’s good. School year went okay?”

  “Fine. Mostly Bs again. Teacher said he’d do better if he didn’t daydream all the time.”

  “Bs are okay. Hell, I was happy when I got Cs.”

  “Not to hear Fred tell it. If he doesn’t bring home As it’s because he’s not trying, or because he’s stupid.”

  My jaw clenched up and I had to work it around in a circle to get it relaxed again. “And how’s Fred?”

  “He’s fine, still having that trouble with his elbow.”

  “I’m not asking after his health. I want to know how he’s treating you and the boy.”

  “Fine.”

  “Still drinking?”

  She looked at me for a second before she answered. “He drinks.”

  A year earlier I’d run across him at a roadhouse, stumbling drunk and surly, and watched him try to pick a fight with a guy with a goddamn peg leg. Fred was mad and itching for a fight with somebody who couldn’t fight back, which I figured would end up being Dot or the boy when he got home. What I wanted to do was knock his fucking head off his shoulders, but instead I called dispatch and had Tommy Carlisle and Rory Blaine wait outside the roadhouse for him to leave. When they pulled Fred over he got lippy and tried to shove Rory, which gave him and Tommy the perfect opportunity to beat the crap out of him. Rory’s nightstick cracked a bone in Fred’s arm at the elbow, and though I’d never owned up to it, somehow Dot had always known it was my doing.

  “You know what’s gonna happen if he lays a hand on either one of you.”

  “You’ve told me.” She was scowling now, the way she always did when we talked about Fred. I hadn’t meant to bring the whole business up for that very reason, but the truth was I liked her better pissed off than blank-faced. “I’ll be in touch with his teacher come autumn, just like I was with Mrs. Bleecker last year. She sees any sign there’s trouble at home and I’ll be all over Fred.”

  “Our hero,” she said. Her face was pinched and even more pale than usual. “Anything else before I go?”

  I didn’t answer, and she stood up just as her danish and coffee arrived. She walked away, and as I watched her go through the door and across the street I thought about how nice things used to be before I fucked everything up by joining the army.

  I walked into the lobby of the Bellingham a little before noon and introduced myself to the day manager, Mr. Nash. He didn’t look too happy, and he sighed out loud when I told him Dan Hardyway of Vice said to say hello. He didn’t like informing on hotel guests, and to tell the truth I didn’t much like strong-arming him that way, but neither of us had much choice.

  “I hear he paid cash for a week in a
dvance. That true?”

  “It’s true. But it’s not as unusual as you might think.”

  “He’s traveling with a lot of green, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “He paid cash for a Plymouth at Welker Brothers.”

  “I doubt he paid more than five or six hundred dollars.”

  “That’s a lot of cash. And he bought a whole bunch of nice clothes over at the Thistle.”

  “You already know this. What do you want me to tell you?”

  “I want you to let me into his room.”

  Mr. Nash was shocked. “I can’t do that.”

  “And if he comes back while I’m up there you ring the phone three times so I can get out quick.”

  “I told you I can’t do that.”

  I leaned forward. “Three arrests, all in the small hours of the morning, all in the park.” I was talking real low, but he still raised his finger to his lips and shooshed me. “Indecent exposure twice, solicitation once. Charges dropped because it’s good to have an inside man at a big hotel. If you don’t want to play ball anymore you better call Dan Hardyway and tell him. Otherwise give me the key and remember it’s three rings if he shows up.”

  Mr. Nash handed me the key looking like he hated my guts. The elevator operator stood at attention the whole ride up to the sixth floor, and when I got off he said “Have a pleasant afternoon, Officer,” even though I was still in my civvies.

  Ogden’s room was more of a suite. There was a duffel bag on the folding stand next to the bed, and his civilian clothes were folded up in the top drawer of the dresser. His Class A uniform was hanging in the closet along with some expensive civilian clothes, all of them with the Thistle’s label. I looked out the window at the bridge below and the river, and I wondered what the hell was so great about army life that he’d left a woman like Sally for it.

  In the duffel bag was a packet of letters tied together with a rubber band. The top letter was worn, as if it had been read over and over, and at least once it had been crumpled and then smoothed out again. The date at the top of the page was less than three months ago. The page had been unfolded and refolded so many times it was hard to read around the creases. It was on Collins company stationery, with the name Cecil Wembly on the letterhead:

  March 29, 1952

  Dear Wayne,

  Perhaps you remember me. We were in high school together on the debate team. I always remember your quickness and off-the-cuff wit when I am called upon to make a presentation here at Collins. For you see I have followed in your footsteps and got myself a job here in the Public Relations Division. Several people here have spoken highly of you, including Mr. Collins himself. You will no doubt be glad to learn that he still comes in every morning rain or shine, and he has asked me to convey his belief that you have a future here when your service to our country has run its course.

  But it is not to tender an offer of employment that I write you. What I speak of here could destroy your future with this company, even with this city! I do not relish the prospect of passing on the terrible knowledge I am about to. Every man who weds carries with him into that blessed state an image of his wife as a pure and sacred being, and I well remember your own Sally from our high school days, when she was both admired for her beauty and cherished for her . . .

  I didn’t see a second page and my time was short so I dug through a bunch of ratty civilian clothes to the bottom of the bag, where I found a blackjack, an eight-inch hunting knife, and a cardboard box full of ammunition for a .38. I put them back where I’d found them and left.

  Getting off the elevator on the ground floor I asked the operator his name. “Roger Lantrain,” he said. He wasn’t much over twenty, with a smirk on the corner of his mouth.

  “Okay, Roger. Word gets around that I was up there and I’ll shut your little operation down real quick.”

  His smirk didn’t disappear, but he had to work to keep it up. “What operation?”

  “Sneaking bottles and call girls up into the rooms. A little reefer sometimes, too.” The bottles and whores were a sure thing in a big hotel, but I was just guessing on the reefer. I had him, though. That smirk was gone.

  “Yes sir.” He damn near saluted when I stepped out of the cage.

  I hadn’t found any cash in the room, so unless he had his whole wad on him he must have put it in the safe. Mr. Nash wasn’t too keen on the idea of me searching the safe.

  “I don’t want to search it. I just want you to show me what he put in it.”

  He led me into the hotel office and opened the safe, then pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. It contained the title to a 1946 Plymouth and one thousand six hundred thirty dollars in cash. I handed him the envelope back and he replaced it in the safe.

  “That’s all for now, Mr. Nash.” He didn’t answer, just went back to his paperwork and pretended he couldn’t see me anymore.

  As I was walking out a guy with a fading shiner passed me on his way in. I stopped at the lobby tobacco stand and pretended to study the headline on the Beacon while he talked to Nash at the desk. Something he said made the man blush, and as soon as Ogden was in the elevator on his way up I stopped back at the desk.

  “Yes, that was him,” Nash said.

  “What’d he have to say that got you so flushed?”

  “He said he just fucked the ugliest prostitute in the world, and he did it four times.” He couldn’t help laughing a little, and neither could I.

  I still wanted to see Sally before reporting for duty. It was two-thirty, and she’d be getting home in an hour or so. On the way I stopped in at Welker Brothers and went up to the sales office. I didn’t see the salesman who’d unloaded the piece of shit old Ford on me. Probably he’d gone on to something more legit, like selling fake magazine subscriptions door to door. The man who’d sold Ogden his car was there, though, and once I flashed the badge he was happy to talk, maybe even relieved.

  “Sergeant McCowan accused me of cheating him before we’d even exchanged names,” he said. “There was definitely the implication that if he wasn’t treated fairly something bad would happen.”

  “So you treated him fair and square?”

  “Sure.”

  “Must have felt good for a change.”

  “I don’t mean I ordinarily wouldn’t have.”

  “Look,” I said. “See that Ford out there? The black one? I bought that here less than six months ago and it’s a real pile of shit. Nothing but trouble. Won’t start half the time, stalls in traffic.”

  He was starting to get nervous. “You should’ve brought her in when you had trouble.”

  “Warranty stopped after thirty days. Didn’t start to go bad until day thirty-one.”

  He was sweating, from the heat or from the idea that they’d sold a cop a lemon. “You’re a police officer. Why didn’t you tell us that when you bought the car?”

  “What makes you think I didn’t?”

  “We never would’ve . . .” He stopped himself and shrugged. “We might’ve made you a better deal, is all.”

  “All right.” I got up. “I’m coming back in next week and if it’s not running like a goddamn top when I take it off the lot I’m trading it in for the full purchase price, understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And if you see this character again, not a word about my coming around.”

  “Yes sir.”

  I got back into the Ford and headed for Sally’s. I was glad I’d come in. The bastards had skinned me, and I wanted it put right. Maybe I’d get some satisfaction after all. Maybe I’d even go back and buy Ginger’s car there.

  I stopped at a phone booth to make sure Sally was going home. After six rings the baby-sitter answered.

  “Mrs. Ogden will be home around three forty-five, and then she’ll be taking me home.” Which meant she wouldn’t be back home until four-fifteen, probably, and I was on duty at five. “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Ju
st tell her Officer Fahnstiel called.” I hung up and went back to the car. I’d make a stop later, when I was on duty, or in the morning before I went to work. Whatever her husband was doing back in town it wasn’t charity work, and I wasn’t going to let her do anything this weekend that would give this creep an opening. She wouldn’t like it, but that was how it was going to have to be.

  13

  Tricia had made her way through the whole front section of the paper to the funnies and her father was still trying to pry something out of her grandmother. As was her habit she had tuned out of the argument and was only vaguely aware of the source of the dispute. Dot had finished the Jumble and done enough of the crossword to ruin it, and there seemed to be nothing in the house to read except the preceding month’s Silhouette Regency Romances. She needed something to keep her mind off the bickering or it would give her a stomachache, and she thought about walking around the corner to the drugstore for People or maybe a cheap paperback.

  “All right,” Sidney said, no closer to getting his mother to talk than when they’d walked in on him. “Let’s say you’re playing it straight. You paid off the RV and the mortgage—”

  “Who says we paid off the RV?”

  “The bill of sale says so. Let’s say you paid that off, plus about twenty years of a thirty-year mortgage, plus you installed air-conditioning and God knows what else, on Social Security plus a cop’s pension and a nurse’s on top of it. Just for the sake of argument.”

  “That’s what we did.”

  “Then how’d you eat? How’d you buy shoes? You didn’t have any savings when the old man died.”

  Tricia stood and moved for the door, waiting for an opening in the conversation where she could announce her departure. Her stomach muscles were starting to tighten and she considered leaving without saying anything. Probably they wouldn’t even notice.

  “And just how exactly would you know that?” Dot snarled.

  “Because the VA paid for the funeral and I know you’d have paid for it yourself if you could. Hell, I’d have paid for it myself if I’d had the money back then. Would’ve been my pleasure.”